Hot Type, for the week of June 15, 2001 -- continued Arched Eyebrows “A powerful statement," said A.E. Eyre. He was studying plans for the new national World War II memorial soon to rise on the Mall in our nation's capital. "It's got all the elements," said Eyre and read aloud. "`Ceremonial steps...bronze bas-relief panels along the ceremonial entrance balustrades...two 43-foot arches....Bronze baldachinos are an integral part of the arch design...'" I hadn't known about the bronze baldachinos. "You can't go wrong with bronze baldachinos," said Eyre. Until he opened my eyes I'd been mired in the conventional wisdom, which held that our World War II memorial was going to look a lot like what Albert Speer would have designed had Hitler won the war. Not that it ever occurred to me that the World War II generation needed any memorial at all. For their monument, look around you, I told Eyre. "You mean, at a land of peace and plenty in which American young people are free to clap on earphones and grow up in blissful ignorance?" That's the one, I said. "But that's why we finally need a memorial," said Eyre. "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to commemorate it." With this? "It's just like the movie Pearl Harbor," said Eyre. "A tourist-friendly salute to the folks who won the war that doesn't offend anyone who lost it. To us Americans who know the code, these two weird arches with bronze baldachinos represent the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. And these even weirder 17-foot granite stelae in between symbolize the American states and territories that gave the flower of their youth to the cause." It struck me that an effective World War II memorial shouldn't require a plaque that says "World War II memorial" -- lest generations yet unborn jump to the conclusion that Julius Caesar won an important battle here. "But that's the beauty of off-the-shelf monumentality," said Eyre. "To an unreconstructed old Nazi, the arches could just as easily stand for the Blitzkrieg and Barbarossa, and the granite stelae for the months the Germans held Paris. Or let's say you're Japanese. Maybe the arches remind you of Tojo and Hirohito. Maybe the stelae suggest the South Pacific atolls your boys defended to the last man. The motto of this design could easily be, `We'll provide the symbolism. You provide the memories.'" Eyre fell silent. "Or we could celebrate the war for the era of peace and plenty it ushered in," he mused. "We could mount a '55 Chevy on a pedestal." What about some actual graves? I said. A few rows of simple white crosses along the Mall, perhaps bordered by a low white picket fence. Eyre stroked his chin. "So your idea is to remember the war by focusing on the 400,000 Americans who died in it?" Just an idea, I said. And maybe a few lines from Ernie Pyle inscribed somewhere: "Medals and speeches and victories are nothing to them now. They died and others lived and nobody knows why it is so. They died and thereby the rest of us can go on and on." "The memorial people wisely decided differently," said Eyre. "By this late date the dead are secondary." News Bite • More news from the Tribune primness desk: Page one Metro headline, June 8: "Judge denies he harassed lawyers." Headline over the balance of the same story back on page four: "Judge admits to sex with court worker." Send tips, tirades, and comments to hottype@chicagoreader.com Copyright © 2001 Chicago Reader, Inc. All rights reserved.