Man who shepherded WWII Memorial to completion dies

F. Haydn Williams, a former Defense Department official and president of the Asia Foundation who spearheaded efforts to build the National World War II Memorial on the Mall, died April 22 at his home in San Francisco. He was 96.

The cause was heart disease, said a great-niece, Katie Evans.

During a long career in international development and diplomacy, Williams held academic posts and served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense under presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. From 1964 to 1989, he was president of the Asia Foundation, a San Francisco-based organization providing international development support to countries in Asia.

Williams, a World War II veteran, was appointed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton to the American Battle Monuments Commission. As chairman of its National World War II Memorial committee, he led the complicated and sometimes controversial process of procuring a site and gaining approval for the memorial’s design.

“The Washington Monument took 52 years to build,” Williams told the Chicago Tribune in 1998. “The Lincoln Memorial took 21, the Jefferson Memorial took nine, and the FDR Memorial took 42. We’re likely to surpass them all.”

The project took on a poignant urgency because it was not formally approved by Congress until 1993, five decades after World War II was fought. Veterans were dying by the thousands, and many would not live to see the memorial’s completion.

Amid considerable debate about the memorial’s site and design, Williams said it should become a prominent part of “the monumental core of Washington,” befitting the war’s role as “the defining event of the 20th century.”

He was principally responsible for selecting the memorial’s ultimate location, a 5

-acre site on 17th Street NW, between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. The spot included the so-called Rainbow Pool, an oblong fountain at the eastern end of the Reflecting Pool. The land near the Rainbow Pool had long been used as the staging area for the Mall’s July 4 fireworks and as a landing site for helicopters bringing dignitaries to the White House and Capitol.

Opponents criticized the secrecy of the process and said the site was selected in 1995 without proper public notice. Williams was quoted as say- ing, “The site was approved before they” — the public — “knew what hit them.”

Williams faced further hurdles when the memorial’s design, by architect Friedrich St. Florian, was unveiled. Architecture critics, public officials and even some veterans criticized the huge structure as a monstrosity reminiscent of the “gigantic classical monuments built for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler by his architect, Albert Speer,” as Chicago Tribune writer Michael Kilian put it.

After St. Florian’s design was scaled back, the World War II Memorial opened to the public in April 2004.