The November morning was brisk and bright and promising, so I went underground.
It wasn't a protest against beautiful autumn days, but a long-overdue first visit to the National World War I Museum, a sleek 21st-century bunker beneath the 1920s-era Liberty Memorial.
Therein I saw spiked helmets, colorful tunics, hand grenades of many nations. I stood in the pit of a scale-model shell crater amid recreated battlefield sounds. I watched short films with ominous soundtracks. I read maps and timelines and charts of numbers upon numbers.
Old and new. The antique and the high-tech, trying to distill years of events that snuffed an old world and birthed a new one. Even spread out over three hours, it's pretty overwhelming.
So I rode the elevator up and back about 90 years, to the observation deck of the Liberty Memorial.
* * *
When the war ended in the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, people here had already been talking for two days about the Kansas City Journal's idea.
"The most practical and most happy suggestion for perpetuating the glorious achievements of the Kansas City, and Missouri and Kansas soldiers," the newspaper called it. "Erect a Victory monument in the station plaza."
Civic leaders reacted. A splendid idea indeed. ... A glorious way for the people of Kansas City to express their appreciation of the soldier boys. ... Let's not talk about it, but go right ahead and provide the monument. What a grand thing it would be to do.
And there was another thread of thought. "It would beautify the city," said the Journal.
The victory arch at dawn, the victory arch at noontime, in winter, in spring, in the fall, the victory arch at sundown, at midnight – what a pleasure for Kansas City and a privilege to gaze at its ever-changing beauty.The architect of the city boulevard system took it larger: Time to move beyond a preoccupation with commerce. Time for art.
"I believe the memorial is but the beginning of further effort along the line of great civic enterprises," said George Kessler. "We are beginning to learn that there is another phase of life besides that of accumulating."
Funds for the monument came from private donations. The entire $2.5 million in 10 days.
* * *
The thing about the National World War I Museum that loops in memory is the audio alcove, a glassed-in cone-of-silence with softly colored lights and a sound system that plays recorded snippets of old speeches, music and literature.
It delivered that old world to me more immediately than any map or ersatz shell crater.
A keypad touch brought the voices of The Kaiser and President Wilson.
"How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree?)"
Excerpts from A Farewell to Arms and The Great Gatsby.
And "In Flanders' Fields." I played that one twice.
That was a poem my mother memorized as a schoolgirl in the 1940s, a time when schoolchildren did such things. A time when November 11 was called Armistice Day and veterans of that war – some missing an arm or a leg – sold carnations on street corners.
One U.S. veteran of that war survives today.
The other day Mom recited "In Flanders' Fields" over the telephone.
* * *
The November sun was shining up on the Liberty Memorial observation deck.
I stood there and soaked up the commanding view of the central business district. This has long been an island of peace, a quiet place to reflect.
About the ironies of a War to End All Wars.
About the fact that fewer travelers see the place now from Union Station as from the section of I-35 that slices through town to the west. Perhaps the new museum draws visitors that would not have stopped otherwise.
About the enduring, ever-changing beauty of the monument. As a war memorial, as a source of civic pride.
And as a portal to a younger city, awakening to another phase of life.
