The Politics of Readjustment by Wilbur Scott

Author:Wilbur Scott [Scott, Wilbur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies)
ISBN: 9781351476881
Google: xNszDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-04T05:00:13+00:00

The Politics of Design, Round Two

On March 14, 1981, H. Ross Perot contributed $160,000 to underwrite the design competition. Though a contribution of this size was of course welcome, it did provoke some uneasiness. Some veterans did not want any contributor, and the outspoken Perot in particular, to have an undue say in the outcome of the competition. That decision should be left, the committee agreed, solely to the jury of professionals that had been already selected. By the deadline at the end of the month, 1,421 designs had been submitted.

The designs were trucked to an empty hangar at nearby Andrews Air Force Base, where they could be displayed for easy review by the judges.20 The Air Force also provided twenty-four-hour-a-day security. The committee feared that an “antiwar or antimilitary group” might try to destroy the designs. The symbolic potential was great. Only one problem surfaced immediately. Resident pigeons promptly crapped on the designs. Though the damage was unintentional, it just would not do to leave the situation unchecked. The guards were given pellet guns and instructed to handle the problem informally.

The schedule called for the jury to deliberate from Monday, April 27 through Friday, May 1. Each juror had agreed to view each entry at least once. By Tuesday, the jurors had eliminated 1,189 of the designs. Only 232 now remained. By Thursday, they had distilled the number of 32. Of these, 15 would receive honorable mention. On Friday, the number was down to three. The unanimous winner was design number 1,026. The jurors were ready to present it to the committee. Jan Scruggs later described the scene:

As [the committee] entered the hangar, they saw rows and rows of designs hung on metal braces. It was breathtaking. The competitors had obviously invested an extraordinary amount of time and talent. . . . Scruggs walked off by himself to calm down. ... A flapping sound distracted him. Flopping along the floor was a wounded, bloody pigeon.

... A juror went behind the curtain and brought out the number-three design. . . . Scruggs recognized the work of Frederick Hart. It was great. Beautiful. He could not wait to see the next one.

The second place winner . . . looked weird to Scruggs. It was like a pile of twisted steel on two marble pillars.

He pushed deeper into his chair. . . . The next one would be a winner, a great design.

Then it came. A big bat. A weird-looking thing that could have been from Mars. Scruggs smiled. Maybe a third-grader had entered the competition and won. . . .

Silence hit. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

[John] Wheeler felt the confusion around him. It was hard to envision the pastel sketches as finished stone. But he began to see it: massive, longer than a football field. Every name. Every name.

The moment was slipping away. It was time for commitment. “This is a work of genius,” Wheeler said.

The group applauded.21

Despite that verbal vote of confidence, the committee knew that it had a public relations problem on its hands.

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