Memorial rises, 8 decades late
lion, all privately raised, and when asked the impetus after so many years, Myatt slowly formed his answer:
“There was a certain amount of guilt.”
That guilt goes back to the 1920s design of the complex by architect Arthur Brown Jr., which included War Memorial Court, the gated plaza that separates the buildings and runs from Van Ness Avenue to Franklin Street. Brown even made a preliminary sketch of a monument at the east end, across from City Hall.
Not enough money
“Thank God that didn’t get built, because it was a big, tall spire,” said Myatt. Lack of funds scratched the plan for the spire, and lack of funds also scratched plans for landscaping.
In 1935, Brown recommended that famed landscape architect Thomas Church design a garden. His plan included a circular plot at the east end of the court. Within that circle was an octagon marked as the site of a “future memorial.”
When Church’s garden was completed in 1936, a group of veterans interred soil collected from battlefields where U.S. troops fought and died in the Great War. Soil from World War II was added during a ceremony after the United Nations Charter was signed in the Veterans Building in June of 1945.
In 1988, a third ceremony was held, to add soil from the Vietnam War in the octagon.
But the memorial that was to rise out of this sacred soil had never gotten off the ground, though there have been at least three concerted efforts in the past 30 years.
“Committees were formed, and then there were arguments over what it should be,” said Elizabeth Murray, managing director for the War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. “And then it never happened.”
What made it finally happen is that Myatt retired from the Marines after a 32-year career that included two tours in Vietnam. His last posting was at the Pentagon, but he was a native San Franciscan, so he came home to retire 20 years ago.
He became president and CEO of the Marines’ Memorial Association, and then-Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed him to the War Memorial Board of Trustees in 2007 to join Charlotte Shultz and Bashford, among others.
“When I got on the board, Wilkes and I were talking, and we said, ‘We’re going to make this thing happen,’ and we did,” says Myatt, who is short-winded in the military style.
Since you cannot offer naming rights to a memorial, the driveway that circles Memorial Court was named the Charlotte and George Shultz Horseshoe Drive. The honor was bestowed by the Stephen Bechtel Fund, which made the leadership gift of $1.5 million.
Design contest
Once the funding mechanism was in place, a committee was formed to review the work of more than 100 artists. Three of them were invited to submit design concepts, which were displayed in the lobby of the Veterans Building, with public comment invited. The winner was Susan Narduli, who has a history of designing places of remembrance and works out of a studio near the UCLA campus in Westwood.
Narduli was given the parameter of putting the memorial in the same plot of ground that Church had designated, while retaining the geometry of the circle and the octagon.
Narduli’s design, with landscaping by Andrea Cochran, covers the original octagon with rough granite that has been cut lengthwise by a walking path. A reflecting pool forms a circle around the stone. On the polished granite wall facing the passageway is inscribed the poem “The Young Dead Soldiers” by Archibald MacLeish.
Construction began in April when the battlefield soil from the octagon was excavated, and put into a cherrywood chest for storage in the Opera House.
The soil could not be stored in the Veterans Building because it has been closed for a year for major renovations. Its budget of $130 million does not include any funding for the memorial.
When the Veterans Building reopens, the American Legion Department of California, along with the San Francisco Post of the Legion, will move back in. But that will be in another year. It will have been 83 years before any veteran could look out the office window and see a veterans memorial in the courtyard.
But the Legionnaires are expected to be there Friday. As part of the San Francisco Veterans Memorial Dedication Ceremony, the chest of battlefield soil will be removed from the Opera House and entombed into the granite face of the the monument. It can be reopened as needed to add soil from Afghanistan and Iraq and future wars.
Blue Angels overhead
Friday’s ceremony starts at 3 p.m., timed to the Blue Angels’ performance over the bay. Also on Friday, President Obama is scheduled to be at the W Hotel in town for a Democratic fundraiser. If security or scheduling keep him from attending the public ceremony, there is hope he will visit the memorial privately.
Myatt can’t say for sure that the president will drop by or that the Blue Angels will fly by. But he can say for sure that the 1st Marine Division Band will make the trip from Camp Pendleton in San Diego.
“I commanded the 1st Marine Division,” he said. “That band will be here.”