Some candidates for a great garden of American heroes

President Donald Trump has proposed a national statuary park. His gallery of American heroes reflects his inclinations and impulses. Trump selections such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Robinson, Amelia Earhart, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and the Wright Brothers could be in everybody’s pantheon. But the president’s garden lacks a diverse mix of Americans at full flower. So I’ve matched Trump’s 31 selections with 31 of my own..

Let’s start with Jonas Salk, who produced the polio vaccine. He’s a symbol of American medical research at its finest and American volunteerism at its broadest; some 100 million

Americans contributed money to help underwrite polio research.

Now let’s add four presidents — Democrat Barack Obama (for breaking a formidable barrier), and Republicans Dwight Eisenhower (for his role in World War II and his stewardship during the Cold War), Gerald Ford (for healing America after Watergate), and George H.W. Bush (for amazing American grace).

An aside to explain the omission of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. They have memorials in the capital. And John F. Kennedy has the arts center on the Potomac. They’re covered.

Let’s not leave Emma Lazarus out of our garden. She made the immigrants’ song a national anthem. Let’s not omit Irving

Berlin, who didn’t write the national anthem but might have; “God Bless America” is often played at sporting events.

Now add Frank Lloyd Wright, for making America’s built landscape reflect the natural landscape. Also John Chapman, known as Johnny Appleseed, for enriching the American landscape. How about Mary Cassatt, the impressionist painter who made us look at that landscape differently? As for that landscape, John Muir was its great celebrator and preserver.

Let’s also induct two curators of the environment. The first is Rachel Carson, one of the founding modern environmentalists. Then there is Henry David Thoreau. He was the tour guide of a specific sort of American Dream, the one of boundless possibility.

As for sports figures. I’d choose Diana Golden, who won 10 world skiing championships and an Olympic gold medal on one leg. And let’s add tennis player Althea Gibson, the first Black woman to be No. 1 in the world.

Larry Kramer helped make AIDS be seen as an American crisis. He belongs in our garden. So does Sojourner Truth, who escaped from enslavement to become a prominent abolitionist and women’s rights advocate. Let’s also invite in Barry Goldwater, who changed conservatism even as he himself changed as he grew older; there was no more fervent advocate of gay rights than the Arizona senator.

Let’s include a personal favorite of mine: Willa Cather, literary chanteuse of the West.

Who better to represent the American reach for adventure and the country’s technological acumen than John Glenn, who rode into space in 1962 and again in 1998 at age 77.

Let’s include two fighters for minority rights to a garden watered with the blood and toil of native peoples and the enslaved. Let’s salute Crazy Horse and issue a huzzah to Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice and a tireless warrior for justice.

Let’s fill out the garden with the Black students who battled the governor of Arkansas to be admitted to Central High School in 1957. With the assistance of the 101st Airborne and the Arkansas National Guard, federalized by Eisenhower, the Little Rock Nine entered the school.

I conclude by acknowledging that many of those in my garden have flaws. Then again, so does the author of this column, and the readers of it.