... Another year, another quiz bowl trip. Sometimes it seems like that's how things go. We've been very successful over the years in quiz bowl at Garrigan, and very fortunate to be able to travel repeatedly to nationals. 2004 would mark the school's seventh trip to the National Academic Championships, and we had some of our best players ever this year. We also had a lot of alternates, in fact one of the biggest delegations we've ever taken. We'd be going to Washington, D.C., with a side trip to Philadelphia. Plans were finalized shortly after the team won a tournament at North Kossuth last January, and the kids had been looking forward to it ever since.
As I usually do in writing up these quiz bowl trips, I'll generally avoid mentioning the specific students by name. Let me begin by introducing the team, though, using the official "biographies" the kids themselves came up with for our entry form:
Bishop Garrigan High School - Algona, Iowa
(Qualified by winning regional tournaments at North Kossuth and Boone.)
| Starters: Tyler Rolling - Senior
John Kohlhaas (pronounced COLE-house) - Senior - Captain
Matt Courtney - Junior
Amber Golwitzer (pronounced GOAL-wit-sir) - Senior
|
Alternates: Eric Cassmann - Senior
Jesse Bode (pronounced BO-dee) - Senior
Josh Broesder (pronounced BREWS-der) - Senior
Adam Cink (pronounced SINK) - Senior
Scott Stence - Senior
|
Algona, Iowa to Huber Heights, Ohio
I was up at about 5:40 this morning, well before my usual hour. I brewed a pot of the key lime coffee I had picked up when visiting Steve in Florida at Memorial Day. It wasn't anything special (basically pretty standard flavored coffee), but it had enough caffeine to wake me up. I got my stuff together and headed out to school to get things underway.
* * * * *
About half of the group was at Garrigan when we left. We would be picking up the other half in the little town of Wesley, about 15 miles east of Algona. One of the Wesley delegation was a student who was notorious for being late. The students suggested that someone should get on a cell phone and call this person to make sure he was there on time. One of the students did call him, and (as I deduced from hearing half of the conversation) he was apparently already at the convenience store where we had arranged to meet. The caller decided to have a bit of fun, though. He managed to convince the kid he was calling that we had actually arranged to meet somewhere else and that, in fact, we were already there and the kid was late. At this time we were in fact in Sexton, about halfway between Algona and Wesley. A couple minutes later, just as we were turning off to go into Wesley, the kid who made the call heard his cell phone ring. The "tardy" boy was now asking where we were; he had gone to the alternate destination, but no one was there. He figured out from the bursts of laughter in the background that it had all been a joke, and he was back at the convenience store by the time we got there.
Absolutely no one other than the kids who were making the trip was at Garrigan when we left, but it seemed as if half the town of Wesley was at that convenience store. Not only did we see four kids and many of their parents, but also lots of their parents' friends and people who were just buying gas or picking up groceries. Everyone wished us good luck, most in a way that seemed genuinely hopeful that we'd do well.
We had a long, dull drive to Cedar Rapids. Completing Avenue of the Saints has shortened that trip by nearly an hour, but there's still not much way to describe it other than long and dull. We stopped at the Quik Trip on Blair's Ferry Road for a bathroom break. Since our delegation included nine people who required the men's room and two who needed to visit the ladies' room, we were in the unusual position of having a line on the men's side. To save some time I ran to the Burger King next door and used their facilities. Before long we were back in the suburban and headed out again.
We went down to Iowa City, then over to Davenport, and then made our way south to Galesburg-following the exact same roads we took when we went to St. Louis last year. We stopped for lunch at the same place, too: Fazoli's in Galesburg. The grandmotherly Italian woman who had served us endless breadsticks a year ago was still working there, but she was behind the counter now, rather than in the dining room. Most of the group got their food quickly, but two of the boys had ordered a pizza that would take about fifteen minutes to prepare. While the waited, those two ran to Wal-Mart to get an adaptor they could use to hook electronic equipment up to the cigarette lighter in the suburban. They made it back just as the waiter came with one of the biggest pizzas I have ever seen. They ate about four slices of it and took the rest with them, saying this way they'd have something to eat tonight. They ended up stinking up the suburban with a garlic smell, and I'm pretty sure they threw out more than half of it once we got to the hotel.
Our afternoon drive took us along I-74 from Galesburg to Peoria (which we skirted on the beltway) and on into Indiana. Every couple of hours we would stop for some sort of a break. Since we had three drivers, we'd alternate in the two suburbans so someone was always able to rest. Daryl pretty much exclusively drove the white suburban, Angie drove the blue suburban, and I alternated between the two.
As so often happens on these trips, the kids divided into cliques in the two suburbans, and I definitely had the one I liked and the one I disliked. I liked the blue suburban, which contained most of our starters. The kids were polite, and they seemed to be looking forward to the quiz bowl competition. Sometimes they listened to music on headphones, while other times they chatted with each other. They were very well behaved, and in general it was a fun group to travel with. Unfortunately, I probably drove more in the white suburban (filled mostly with alternates), where the group seemed to just want to have fun. They'd brought along a DVD player (I sometimes wonder how people my age managed to grow up without such things as watching movies in cars) and a video game console, plus enough snacks to feed a small country for a month. They were loud and not especially fun to be with, and for most of them the fact that this was a quiz bowl tournament seemed incidental to the fact that it was a road trip.
One of the videos the white suburban group watched was something I'd never heard of before that I've encountered countless times since, a collection of stand-up comedians entitled Blue Collar Comedy. The one part of this I had heard of before (though in print, rather than on audio or video) was some guy who strings together a bunch of jokes that all begin with the phrase "You might be a redneck if ...". The rest of the acts followed the same theme, but each was slightly cruder than the one before. Some of the jokes really didn't seem appropriate for a school trip, though neither Daryl nor I said anything at the time (and, fortunately, we only had to listen to it once). One of the comedians ended each of his jokes with the phrase "Git 'er dun" (sic). I'd never heard that phrase before, but obviously the kids had. Throughout this trip we'd be hearing it endlessly. Strangely, I kept on hearing it almost everywhere I went throughout the summer. Obviously Blue Collar Comedy is relatively popular, though this was the only time I ever personally encountered it.
We stopped for gas in LeRoy, Illinois, at a very strange little truck stop out in the middle of nowhere. The place had a game room that included a pool table, and a couple of the kids played a quick game. There was also a back room full of what looked to be a bunch of slot machines. That can't possibly be legal, but then again this is Illinois; having been born here it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone bribed someone to make it happen.
We stopped for dinner just west of Indianapolis. It was early (just before 5:00), but stopping would let us avoid going right through the city at rush hour. Most of the group ate at Arby's, but I went to a White Castle next door. The same two boys who had bought electronics in Galesburg again ran to a Wal-Mart, this time to pick up batteries.
Traffic was heavy as we joined the Indianapolis beltway, but it moved right along. I could almost imagine myself in the Indianapolis 500 as I maneuvered the beltway. Like some racetracks, the beltway is basically one big long curve-I don't think there's a straight stretch the whole way around it. I planted myself in the middle lane, and keeping up with the rest of the traffic (which was doing well above the 65mph speed limit) while making a constant, gentle turn to the left really did make me feel like a race driver.
East of Indianapolis there was almost no car traffic. What we saw instead was trucks. The truck traffic was heavy in Indiana, but it was absolutely horrible in Ohio. The whole state seems to be one big line of double- and triple-bottom trucks, all going about 62 miles per hour (the car speed limit is 65, but the truck limit is 60). I was thankful that we were only going to Exit 36; I think I'd have gone insane if I had gone any further.
Our destination tonight was the Holiday Inn Express in Huber Heights, Ohio. Huber Heights is a suburb northeast of Dayton, and Exit 36 could be any suburban strip anywhere in America. (Actually the fact that there are sidewalks here betrays the fact that this is an established Midwestern suburb.) The hotel was very nice, frankly one of the nicest places I've ever stayed. The kids liked the fact that there was a nice pool, as well as a computer with free internet access in the lobby. The rooms were also large and pleasant, with good lighting, powerful showers, and comfortable beds. The rooms had cards guests were supposed to fill out to evaluate the cleanliness of the rooms; for each card turned in, the maid would receive a dollar. I can't imagine anyone marking anything less than "excellent" (actually a big smiley face) in any of the categories, because the place was absolutely immaculate.
Shortly after we settled in a few of the boys knocked on my door. They had found out there was a movie theatre nearby and wanted to know if they could go to a movie. It was already after 9pm (Eastern time), and I couldn't help but wonder why watching DVDs all day or having two free movie channels at the hotel couldn't satisfy their need for video entertainment. We talked for a while, and eventually I agreed to drive them over to the theatre and let them watch a movie and walk back, provided they checked in as soon as they got back.
The boys took forever to change (they might, after all, run into girls they could flirt with at the theatre). Eventually they were ready, though, and I drove them about half a mile to the cineplex, where they found that the one thing that was left to see was a 10:00 screening of some Disney picture. That seemed perfectly okay with them, though. They went in, and I drove to a nearby convenience store.
* * * * *
The movie was obviously not a long one, and the boys apparently didn't meet anyone with whom they wanted to spend much time, because they were back at the hotel by 11:30. I settled into bed and got a fairly good night's sleep.
Huber Heights, Ohio to Arlington, Virginia
We had an excellent breakfast at the hotel this morning but were still on our way early, leaving the Dayton area at 7:10am. The interstate through western Ohio was absolutely packed. We passed countless cities I'd never heard of (New Carlisle, Fairborn, Springfield, South Vienna, London, Lafayette, and West Jefferson), which together just seemed like one big endless suburb stretching all the way from Dayton to Columbus. I-70 is just four lanes wide through most of Ohio, and it needs to be a minimum of six. Because the trucks were clogging the right lane, we pretty much drove in the left lane all the way to Columbus. I hate driving in the left lane, but when they have that stupid dual speed limit, there aren't a lot of other options.
We turned off onto the Columbus beltway, another road which doesn't seem to have a straight stretch anywhere. It has some curves both directions, but again most of them are to the left. It was right at rush hour, so there was plenty of traffic; but even with some construction at the south end of the city, things moved along without incident. Before long we were headed eastward on I-70 again.
We stopped for gas in Zanesville, where it was immediately clear that Ohio is a state the middle of things. Western Ohio looks a lot like Indiana and has a Midwestern feel to it, and northern Ohio borders Pennsylvania and feels like the East. The state closest to Zanesville is West Virginia, and the feeling you get here is Southern. The old wood frame Chevron station where we stopped looked like it belonged in Hooterville or Petticoat Junction.
Zanesville is right at the edge of the Appalachian Mountains, and quite suddenly we had mountain driving-a bit of the challenge even on the interstate. Fortunately traffic thinned out quite a bit, so we could enjoy the scenery as we made our way through the passes. We drove east for about another hour and made it to Wheeling, the old steel mill town where Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia meet. We crossed the Ohio River and went right straight through Wheeling (or in some cases under it, as we tunneled beneath the mountains) and then continued east for sixteen miles of the West Virginia panhandle. Then we entered Pennsylvania and felt like we were really in the East.
We were in Pennsylvania for less than an hour. We drove east to the city of Washington (which is essentially a suburb or Pittsburgh), and then drove south on I-79 for about 30 miles until we re-entered West Virginia. The whole area is serious mountain country, and it's really beautiful. I've driven through here three or four times now, but each time I've been in a hurry to get somewhere. I'd like to come back and explore the area at my leisure. There's no big-name tourist attractions in the area, but it's all spectacular scenery.
We had lunch in Morgantown, the home of West Virginia University. There were lots of fast food logos on the blue sign at the exit, but once we got off we found that most of them were actually several miles off the road. The only thing anywhere nearby was a McDonalds, so that's where we ended up having lunch. I had one of the fiesta salads they're pushing this summer-a "low carb" taco salad with just a handful of air-baked tortilla strips for crunchiness. It may be low-carb, but there's nothing low fat about it. It comes with a big scoop of greasy taco-flavored meat, plus lots of cheese and sour cream. I didn't really choose it for health reasons, though. I almost always like Mexican food-as well as its American facsimiles-and this was very good.
At Morgantown we picked up interstate 68, one of the most rugged expressways anywhere in the country. We soon entered Maryland, a state I think of as coastal, but we could just as easily have been in Colorado or Idaho. I've driven this stretch before, too, but it never fails to surprise me just how mountainous much of Maryland is. The mountains aren't high (I don't think anything is over 2,000 feet), but the elevation varies constantly. It's beautiful, but with all the curves and the constant up and down, it's not easy driving.
The suburbans we use at school are well maintained, but they're getting pretty old. As we headed through the mountains we got the first indication that the white suburban might have been getting just a bit too old. The engine groaned a bit as we went up each hill, and as we passed Cumberland it became obvious that the air conditioning was not working. The fan blew air, but it was hot air. Moreover, the voltmeter that shows the battery charge was not showing what it should. In the blue suburban the needle on that meter always stayed exactly in the middle of the meter. On the white suburban the white suburban was not normally at dead center, but it was always just slightly to the left. Today it was far to the left-still not in the orange area that indicated a serious problem, but appearing to edge ever closer to it. The white suburban was the one where some of the kids had plugged electronic devices into the cigarette lighter. After noticing the problem, I quickly told the kids their videos and games were done for the day and unplugged the adapter. The needle moved slightly closer to the center, but never did go back to where it should have been. However, the suburban still seemed to run okay, and from here on it was mostly downhill all the way to Washington.
We re-joined I-70 at Hancock (at a place where the Maryland panhandle stretches less than a mile between Pennsylvania and West Virginia) and took a bathroom break just east of there. It's fascinating that in a state I think of as Eastern, rural Maryland came across as the kind of redneck country they portrayed on Blue Collar Comedy. I was about 70 miles from the nations capitol and not far from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York; but at this gas station I felt like I was in Alabama.
At the gas station we saw for the first time some companions that would be with us through much of the trip, cicadas. These insects emerge from underground burrows every seventeen years, and 2004 was apparently 17 years after the last emergence. They are big insects, the size of the Southern roaches that plagued Hattiesburg when I was in grad school, and their brown skeleton and wings doesn't make them terribly attractive. They only exist in a narrow band with an ideal temperate climate. The deep South is too hot, and most of the East and Midwest are too cold. Apparently western Maryland and northern Virginia are ideal for cicadas, though, because they were absolutely everywhere. I looked up an article on cicadas while writing this and found that their population is usually 50 to 100 per square yard. That's believable given what we saw both here and in suburban Washington.
We followed I-70 east to Frederick, the town I know mostly as the home of Barbara Fritchie, the heroine who refused to surrender the Stars and Stripes in a famous Civil War battle. As I drove past here, in my mind I kept reciting the old John Greenleaf Whittier poem:
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear on the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. ...
... "Shoot if you must this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag," she said. ...
... The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word;
"Who touches a hair of you gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!" he said. ...
... Barbara Fritchie's work is o'er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.
Honor to her! And let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
Over Barbara Fritchie's grave,
Let Flag of Freedom and Union wave! ...
... And ever the stars above look down
On the stars below in Frederick town!
(You'll pardon my editing out about three-fourths of the famous ballad.) From the interstate today the name is really all that's historic about Frederick. The town is basically the start of metro Washington. While it's thirty miles outside the Capitol Beltway, it's pretty much solid development all the way. You see "big box" businesses, strips of fast food and motels, condo developments, and lots and lots of office parks. Some of the exits are for streets that have historic-sounding names, but you know that the big Civil War battles weren't for control of Target or Taco Bell and when "George Washington slept here", it wasn't at the Hampton Inn.
We joined I-270 at Frederick. This interstate starts out busy and just gets busier and busier as it approaches Washington. It's four lanes at Frederick, but it soon becomes six, then eight, and by the time it reaches the beltway as many as fourteen. As I usually do in urban areas, I found a lane slightly to the right of center and just drove with traffic (about 12 miles above the 55 mph speed limit) the whole way.
We reached I-495 (the Capitol Beltway) around 3:00, but it already appeared to be rush hour. The beltway is mostly eight lanes, and there's not much way it could be expanded beyond that. The road was packed, and it was pretty much forced our way on-with at least one driver flipping us off in the process. (One good thing about a suburban-it's bigger than almost anything else in commuter traffic.)
The signs on the beltway all read "Northern Virginia", as if that were the name of a city. It might as well be, because there really isn't any difference between the dozens of suburbs that make up this endless sprawl. We made our way across the Potomac and noticed from signs that ours would be a left exit. So, to the consternation of other traffic, we pushed our way into the left lane. We exited onto the un-numbered Dulles Airport access road, but went the opposite direction from the airport-following signs that said "To I-66". This highway was absolutely empty, a pleasant change from the beltway. I-66 was also pleasant, at least for us. The outbound lanes of the four-lane road were jam-packed, but inbound traffic was fairly light.
We went east about two miles and exited right on the border between Falls Church and Arlington. Our destination was right at that exit: the Econolodge-Metro, which would be our home for the next three nights. Parking in their lot was rather awkward for suburbans, but we managed to make it work, and before long we checked in.
When I planned things ahead of time, I didn't really know what to expect from this motel. I booked it because it was in a convenient location and it was just about the only affordable place we could book. "Affordable" in Washington means about $100 per room per night, but when that cost is divided among four kids it becomes more reasonable. It was actually cheaper for us to stay here than it would have been to stay in the dorms on campus. Because it was affordable, I really didn't expect much of the place. I was just hoping it wouldn't be too unpleasant.
In fact it was a very nice motel. It's located on one of the busiest streets in Arlington (U.S. 29, or Lee Highway), but the nearby area is mostly residential and the motel itself was very quiet. The cement block construction was sturdy, and they had painted things so it even looked attractive. The rooms were pleasantly decorated and small, but adequate for space. The lighting was good, and the bathrooms were clean and functional. They even served a nice breakfast with muffins and a variety of juices. It was certainly not as nice as the Holiday Inn Express in Dayton, but it was definitely better than I expected.
Something different about this year's quiz bowl trip was that my superintendent and his wife were coming to watch the kids play. Gene Meister noted that the tradition when other activities make similar accomplishments (like going to state in sports or all-state in speech) was to treat the kids to a nice meal, and he said he wanted to do that for our quiz bowl team. Gene and his wife Mary Ann had flown into National Airport this morning. They did some sightseeing today, and they were planning to treat the kids to dinner tonight. They'd watch two games tomorrow morning and then fly out in the afternoon. The whirlwind trip had to cost a fortune (I'm betting over $1,000 total), and both the kids and I were amazed that Mr. Meister (who is also our head baseball coach) missed a baseball game to come and see the quiz bowl team.
Gene had given me his cell phone number and told me to contact him when we got to Washington. He and Mary Ann were staying at the same motel, and we found out from the desk that they had checked in earlier in the day. I called Gene and heard a very distorted voice on the other end of the line. It turned out that he was in the subway part of the Washington metro, entering Foggy Bottom station as I called him. They have some sort of antenna in the subway that allows cell phones to work, but honestly they don't work very well. We did manage to communicate well enough to set a time for the group to get together later in the afternoon. I passed the information on to the students, and then our captain and I went to check in at the tournament.
The Econolodge was probably the nearest hotel to Marymount University, the site of the tournament. (If another hotel was closer, it would be no more convenient and would certainly cost more.) The campus was almost exactly three miles from the motel. One of the hardest parts was just getting onto Lee Highway to begin with. All we had to do was make a right turn, but the road is busy enough that even that was a challenge. We then drove two miles east and turned north on either Glebe or Old Dominion Roads. The last tricky part was crossing a busy street to the campus parking area. While it was three miles, the trip took a minimum of ten minutes, and a good fifteen at rush hour.
The parking lot is at the corner of campus, which is spread over several hills in northern Arlington. There was no easy way to get from the parking lot to the student center, and the way we took had to be about the least convenient. We walked about a block downhill and then walked through a parking ramp, going up two levels in the process. The top of the parking ramp let out at a group of stairs that led upward for the equivalent of about another block to a sidewalk at the side of the student center. We had to walk all the way around the student center before we found the one door that was actually open. It wasn't exactly the most direct route, but we made it.
Registration consisted of almost nothing. I had taken the captain along, because sometimes there are questions the kids need to answer or rule interpretations they want to make them aware of. This year about all we did was say our school name and take an envelope with the schedule in it. There had been some schedule changes from what they had posted online, but none of those affected the times when we played. The secretary at the check-in desk noted that they also had T-shirts for sale. They were attractive (unlike the truly hideous one I bought the first year we went to nationals, down in Dallas), and both the captain and I bought one.
We went back to the Econolodge, and I had a nice visit with Meisters in the lobby. Then everybody got ready for dinner, and we assembled in a mirror-filled lower lobby that was conveniently out of the way.
I had chosen to have dinner at Applebee's, the nationwide chain that describes itself as "a neighborhood bar and grill". I remembered that a year ago Meisters had taken the kids who performed at all-state speech (including several of the ones who were here today) to Applebee's in Ames, and everyone had enjoyed it. There was an Applebee's about a mile west of the hotel, on Broad Street in Falls Church. We had purposely planned on an early dinner, so that they could accommodate our group without a wait. We arrived around 5:30 and were almost immediately seated.
Everyone enjoyed dinner. Meisters were cordial and generous. They suggested we order appetizers, and we had a couple of plates for the table. The kids were aware they were being treated, though, and they made relatively modest choices from the menu. Even the mid-range selections at Applebees offer more food than most people can eat, though. Their hamburger, for instance, features a full pound of meat. One of our boys was a very large young man who is well known for eating large portions. He managed to finish the hamburger, but it was a challenge for him.
When we were done with dinner, Meisters insisted that we have dessert. They wouldn't hear of it when we said we were full (which was absolutely true), but they did accept the idea of buying a handful of desserts that could be shared among everyone at the table. The best of the desserts was a "dulce de leche" cheesecake. Dulce de leche is a caramel sauce made with condensed milk, and it mixes very well with cheesecake. It was exceedingly rich (more than I really wanted after a plateful of fajitas), but truly excellent.
* * * * *
Applebee's parking lot was absolutely full of cicadas. As we were getting ready to leave I got a cute picture of one of the boys holding a cicada in his hand like a pet and another of the boy who had eaten the full-pound hamburger posing as if he were about to eat a cicada.
We drove back to the hotel and then almost immediately went into the city. Besides being convenient to the college, the big advantage to the Econolodge was that it was just a short walk from the East Falls Church metro station. On the map it looked like we'd follow city streets for about three blocks to get from the motel to the station. In fact, it was quite a bit easier than that. There's a jogging and bike trail that runs all the way across the city of Arlington, and that trail led directly from the motel to the station. The distance was still equivalent to three blocks, but the tree-lined trail was far more pleasant than busy streets.
The trail was also full of cicadas, and sunset seemed to be the time when they really came out. We made our way along quickly, though, and before long we entered the station. I had purchased day passes of the metro online long before we left. I had already given Meisters passes; now I passed them out to the kids, and everybody scanned them and made their way through the turnstiles.
The metro ride into the city was uneventful. It surprised me a bit that there was no special security in the Washington metro. I had heard that security had gone up since the bombing in Madrid (and figured it was sort of permanently on high since the 2001 terrorist attacks), but everything seemed pretty much the same as it had been when I was here years ago. There were no officers in the trains or stations, nor anything else (other than a few posters advising people to watch for items left in trains or on platforms) that indicated increased security. That really did surprise me. I've ridden the Chicago 'L' during those orange alerts that we seem to have for no good reason every few months. On those occasions they've removed wastebaskets from the platforms and station extra police officers throughout the system. At one point I was on a train that was delayed for about ten minutes while they investigated "a suspicious white powder" that turned out to be sugar from a doughnut.
Having expressed my surprise, I must say that there is a very good chance that there are changes in the metro that aren't visible to passengers. I've read that the biggest change the CTA made after the terrorist attacks was to totally re-design the ventilation system in the subway part of the 'L'. ... They've also installed a lot of new security cameras. Washington's metro has always had security cameras, and it may well be that since the attacks they are now continuously monitoring them.
Our main destination tonight was the brand new World War II Memorial, which is just west of the Washington Monument on the National Mall. The memorial is a long walk from any metro station. (Oddly for a tourist-oriented city with a comparatively new public transit system, most of Washington's tourist attractions are a long walk from the subway.) It took about fifteen minutes to get there from Smithsonian station, but it was worth the walk.
The World War II Memorial has gotten mixed reviews, but I very much liked it. Unlike the starkly simple memorials for Vietnam and Korea, the World War II Memorial looks like the sort of grand old monument you'd expect to see in Paris or Moscow. That's fitting. A colossal war warrants a colossal monument; anything less really wouldn't do it justice. Basically the memorial is a circle of arched pillars surrounding an enormous fountain. Each pillar represents one of the states, and they are joined in two separate arches to represent the two main fronts of the war. I, of course, made a point of finding the Iowa pillar, where others had laid flowers. I also made a point of circling the arch for the Pacific theater, where my father served.
(CONTINUED IN PART 2)
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