I spent 21 years working on
my novel Flower of Iowa before it
reached the public last year. My most
intense research took place while living in Chicago in 1993-1994, a situation
that allowed me to explore Tommy Flowers’s home state, including his hometown of
Brooklyn. My journey also brought me to the Cantigny estate in suburban
Chicago where the nation held its observance of the 75th anniversary
of the Armistice that ended the Great War and the Indiana World War Memorial.
Although I was already
traveling to Great War sites and museums in Britain, France and Belgium to research the novel, ironically I couldn't
visit my own nation’s most prominent WWI memorial. That’s because Kansas City,
Missouri’s Liberty Memorial had so deteriorated that
it was closed for safety reasons in 1994. It seemed an ignominious fate for a
celebrated monument whose groundbreaking in 1921 drew 100,000 people to watch
Generals Ferdinand Foch and John J. Pershing and three other Allied commanders
presented with flags by an obscure local WWI vet named Harry S. Truman. As I
pursued writing a book about a war forgotten by so many Americans, the Liberty
Memorial’s fate was particularly poignant to me.
But American lives are
renowned for having second acts – and so can American monuments. After more than $100 million was raised, the
National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial reopened in 2006, now
incorporating a modern museum. In 2013,
I finally got to visit, and under auspicious circumstances: I was attending the inaugural Symposium, “The Coming of the
Great War,” sponsored by the World War I Historical Association and the Museum
itself. (I attend the 2015 Symposium
this week, and will provide a report when I return.)
It’s hard to say which was more
rewarding – touring the restored memorial and the new museum, or participating
in the Symposium. The content of the programs was as wide-ranging and
informative as one could want. While Europeans still live in the shadows of The
Great War, it’s rare in the U.S. to spend two days with both experts and
ordinary citizens who share an absorbing interest in the events of
1914-1918. These people care
passionately about the First World War; it was hard not to feel like an
interloper at times. (I refuse to call
attendees World War I “buffs” or “aficionados” – words I consider insulting to
both them and those who suffered through the conflict.)
The restored Memorial is an
astonishing bit of 1920s Egyptian Revival architecture, with a soaring central
tower that is topped at night by a Flame of Inspiration. It is flanked by
Assyrian sphinxes and two halls, each of which contains part of an
extraordinary French mural called the Panthéon
de la Guerre, as well as bronze tablets bearing the names of 441 Kansas
City residents who died in World War I.
By contrast, the Museum’s
modern space combines contemporary audiovisual techniques and artifacts to
rival the best Great War museums in Europe. Particularly effective is a film
that evocatively uses period footage to re-create the mood – both innocence and
menace – of a country marching into
global conflict – and taking Tommy Flowers with it.
To download the acclaimed
Great War novel Flower of Iowa, click here.
