RTD misses the point of the National Medal of Honor Museum possibly coming to downtown Denver.
The Regional Transportation District has badly botched a chance to support the possibility of a National Medal of Honor Museum landing in downtown Denver. Wisely, the board has decided to reconsider it at a future date.
The cynicism of a handful of RTD officials about the value of a museum to honor this nation’s bravest members of the military, we can say with conviction, is not a value shared by their fellow Coloradans.
Seven members of RTD (a taxpayerand user fee-funded entity that serves eight counties with transit) shot down a proposal to lease a sliver of vacant land at its downtown Civic Center Station transit hub for use by the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation should it select Denver as the site for its proposed museum.
Board members entertained sending a potential lease of the land out to bid to see if they could get a better offer. This land has remained a vacant patch of dirt ever since the impressive transit hub opened several years ago at Colfax and Broadway.
We’ve not seen reports of any better prospects for the partial lot, which the online news site Denverite said costs RTD more than $100,000 a year to maintain. Even if there is money to be made — say, leasing the land to food trucks or art sellers or New York-style newsstands — we’d be hardpressed to calculate a better value for the taxpayers of Colorado than supporting a tourism-generating museum downtown.
Worse than expressing greed at possibly getting more money for the land with a different deal, one member, according to Denverite, questioned the need for a museum at all.
“I don’t know how many national Medal of Honor winners there are that they need a museum,” Kate Williams posited.
About 3,500 members of the U.S. armed forces have earned such a distinction.
The stories behind each of those individuals deserve to be memorialized.
But we will retell the story of Denver’s own Elmer E. Fryar, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his service during World War II.
The Denver Post’s Danika Worthington wrote in 2018 about Colorado veterans who helped place an official Medal of Honor marker at the foot of his parents’ graves in Wheat Ridge (Fryar’s body never returned from war).
Fryar was in the Philippines fighting Japanese soldiers with the U.S. Army’s Company E, 511th Parachute Infantry, 11th Airborne Division in 1941. Worthington wrote: “As Fryar held back the Japanese soldiers, he spotted soldiers moving to outflank his company. He retreated to higher ground and opened fire, killing 27 Japanese soldiers. Wounded in the process, Fryar’s actions held off the Japanese platoon.
“Fryar went to return to the rest of his platoon and came across another wounded soldier. He grabbed the man and later ran into two others from his platoon, including the platoon’s leader.
“As the four made their way back, Fryar saw a Japanese sniper take aim at the leader. He threw his body in front of the gunfire, receiving the full burst. Severely wounded, Fryar threw a hand grenade, killing the sniper. He died shortly after.”
If these heroes’ stories could find a home in Denver, it would be an honor. RTD should be willing to sacrifice a bit of profit in tribute. Members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are Megan Schrader, editor of the editorial pages; Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor; Justin Mock, CFO; Bill Reynolds, vice president of circulation and production; Bob Kinney, vice president of information technology; and TJ Hutchinson, systems editor.