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PrintKANSAS CITY - Kansas City's World War I memorial may be the national memorial after all.
A group that wants to refurbish a World War I memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C. raised concerns among Missouri's congressional delegation that those efforts might detract from Kansas City's Liberty Memorial.
Sens. Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond of Missouri have sponsored a bill to designate the Liberty Memorial as the official national World War I memorial. The Missouri delegation is also sponsoring bills to make Kansas City the focus of the war's centennial observances from 2014 to 2018.
The delegation became concerned when a bill was filed in Congress backing the Washington D.C. project. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City complained that effort would "essentially take the Liberty Memorial off the map.''
But Edwin L. Fountain, director of the Washington, D.C., group, said in a letter this week to the Missouri delegation that he supports designating the Liberty Memorial as the national World War I memorial.
"We would support designation of the Liberty Memorial as 'the' national World War I memorial,'' Fountain said in his letter. "But that need not preclude establishment of 'a' national memorial to World War I in our nation's capital.''
Cleaver applauded the development.
"This olive branch ... is a very kind gesture to the people of Kansas City,'' Cleaver said. "The acknowledgment that the Liberty Memorial should be the national WWI monument and that Kansas City should host the WWI Centennial Commission is certainly progress. ...''
The honorary chairman of the District of Columbia group is 107-year-old Missouri native Frank Buckles, the last living American veteran of the war.
Buckles signed a letter to Bond, McCaskill and Cleaver saying he only wants to improve a small, neglected memorial built on the National Mall in 1931 to honor veterans from the District of Columbia and to expand its scope to include all American veterans of World War I.
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