Efforts to build a national Dwight Eisenhower memorial have stalled, and Senator Bob Dole is spearheading the effort to get them back on track, the Washington Post reports. The former Republican presidential candidate served under Ike in World War II, and he has called Eisenhower “one of the great Americans.” Both Dole and Ike hail from Kansas.
Architect Frank Gehry’s design for a new memorial has been approved by the National Capital Planning Commission, but Eisenhower’s family didn’t like the design, and as a result Congress failed to provide funding.
Getting a memorial built can be difficult; it took 42 years and several designs to complete the FDR memorial in Washington. Almost 200 thousand World War II veterans die each year, and Dole would like to see the memorial completed before they’re all gone.