A WWI Memorial: And Happy Birthday Storm Clouds!

It was my sister-in-law who first told me about the place. “Mel,” she said. “You just have to visit the World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City.” To really sweeten the deal, she brought me home a mug from her own visit there. A nice little yellow mug that commemorated the female land army of the war years. And honestly, any place that sells mugs is likely a place I’d visit.

But an entire museum dedicated to World War I? Here in the United States? I admit I was kind of surprised. Because World War I, to me, feels like the “forgotten war” here in America. Sort of the overlooked middle child between the Civil War (which there are mountains of books on) and World War II (which there are also mountains of books on). But World War I? You’re lucky if you can find a few old volumes sitting on the shelf at most bookstores.

Probably because, in the grand scheme of things, we weren’t really involved in it for that long. Make no mistake – American blood was shed in that war, on those fields, and in those airplanes, both before our official sign-on and after. But for us, it wasn’t the total and complete bloodletting that most of Europe suffered. It didn’t leave quite as profound a mark on our population or on our national soul. Thus, it just doesn’t always get the attention that I feel it should.

So, when I found out there was an entire museum dedicated to the American involvement in this conflict, one that I could get to quite easily by car, I decided I just had to make my own visit there. Especially given my own personal investment in the battlefields of the First World War.

Oh, I’m no fighter when push comes to shove. However, I do take up my pen like a sword on occasion. And when it comes to World War I, it turns out that I had a lot to say. An entire book’s worth, in fact. A book that you are probably more than familiar with, since I’ve posted about it here quite often. And a book that I am probably the proudest of, given what both it and I went through to get it on store and library shelves (click here to learn more about that).

By the time I was finally ready for my own visit to the National WWI Museum and Memorial, that book had already been released in hardback, and I felt like it was okay to call myself a Bonafide World War I expert. But even I wasn’t quite prepared for the exhibit I was about to see. I mean, what a place. What a sight. What a great way to learn about how, for the people involved, this war well and truly packed a punch. And therefore, it well and truly deserves its place in the collective memory of our history.

Let’s take a pause here and talk a little bit about how this memorial came to be. Because that alone is kind of a neat story, and a solid reminder that after the war ended, citizens across the country were very adamant that it be remembered. Especially for the sake of the men and women who served in it. Which is why in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, in 1919, a prominent band of forty Kansas City citizens got together and decided, “Hey, let’s do something to keep the memory of our war heroes alive.” So, they came up with the Liberty Memorial Association, and they starting drawing up plans for a monument.

Now, normally when people want to build a monument, they run into this little snag known as funding. It’s harder than one might think to raise the money for a big war memorial, and lack of funds has put the halt on many of them in the past. I’m sure the Liberty Memorial Association had this in mind when they started trying to raise the funds for their own monument.

However, they, and Kansas City as a whole, couldn’t have been more surprised at the response to their pleas for money. People ripped open their wallets and threw money at the LMA like candy at a parade. Before they knew it, those forty Kansas City citizens had raised over two million dollars, a staggering amount of money, in just two weeks. A show of unity and patriotism that, quite frankly, I can only dream of seeing here in my own divisive spot on the timeline.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the Kansas City war memorial came on November 1, 1921, and it was attended by over 200,000 people. Including Vice President of the time Calvin Coolidge, some random general named John J. Pershing (wink), and a guy named Harry S. Truman who would be destined to make quite the name for himself down the line. He was also a guy who would come back to the monument to help re-dedicate it in 1961 after he himself had been and gone from the Presidency.

Read the entire article on the M.B. Henry website here:

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