Time is running out for Minnesota's state and local leaders to respond to Department of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt's letter asking for locations for the patriotic and educational project called the National Garden of American Heroes.
The AP reported about back in early July when President Trump called for 'National Garden of American Heroes':
President Donald Trump says he will establish a “National Garden of American Heroes,” which he is describing as “a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans who ever lived.”
Trump made the announcement as he opened the Fourth of July weekend with a speech and fireworks at the iconic Mount Rushmore.
He led into the announcement by paying tribute to a litany of American icons, from political figures like Ulysses S. Grant and Frederick Douglass to entertainers like Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.
The executive order released Friday by the White House says the garden will feature statues of several presidents as well as other historic notables, including Davy Crockett, Amelia Earhart, Billy Graham, Harriet Tubman and Orville and Wilbur Wright....
While we are saddened that Elvis and Frank didn't make the final cut, we are even more mortified that no state or local leader in Minnesota is among those responding to Secretary David Bernhardt's correspondence.
This is especially disappointing when all of Minnesota is above average in natural beauty.
Who can Minnesota add to the list of heroes? Does the Gopher State have statues lounging around that it might add to the educational effort?
We ask because an email from Jeff Small,Senior Advisor to the Secretary, was forwarded to us. Here's what the Secretary of Interior is looking for:
The Secretary’s letter, (an example of which can be found hereasks Governors and local elected officials in every state to provide recommendations that answer the following questions:
- Are there locations of natural beauty within your unit of local government that would serve as a reputable location for these monuments, statues, and the National Garden of American Heroes?
Please list and describe any such locations consistent with the White House’s Executive Order (EO).
- In addition to the 31 individuals listed in the EO, are there any other American heroes who should be recognized in the National Garden of American heroes? Please list and describe any such individuals consistent with the EO.
We have received great bipartisan responses from both Governors and local elected officials across the country. Examples of those responses can be found here. For more information on this project you can visit DOI's American Heroes website.
The Governor's input is important. Please support America's heroes by responding to the Secretary's letter and providing thoughtful recommendations as soon as possible and no later than this Friday, August 28th COB. Please email me an electronic copy of the written response. Let us know if you have questions.
More details about the sort of heroes' statues they're looking for in the President's Executive Order:
Statues should depict historically significant Americans, as that term is defined in section 7 of this order, who have contributed positively to America throughout our history. Examples include: the Founding Fathers, those who fought for the abolition of slavery or participated in the underground railroad, heroes of the United States Armed Forces, recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor or Presidential Medal of Freedom, scientists and inventors, entrepreneurs, civil rights leaders, missionaries and religious leaders, pioneers and explorers, police officers and firefighters killed or injured in the line of duty, labor leaders, advocates for the poor and disadvantaged, opponents of national socialism or international socialism, former Presidents of the United States and other elected officials, judges and justices, astronauts, authors, intellectuals, artists, and teachers. None will have lived perfect lives, but all will be worth honoring, remembering, and studying.
It's easy-peasy to settle on the ideal location in Minnesota for the National Garden of American Heroes.
The bluff country around Winona. This area is so beautiful that its citizens organized to protect the natural beauty from the relentless maw of the fracking industry, picking farmland over frac sand.
Moreover, it's home to the Winona Model Legislature each November, so the kids could use the Garden of Heroes for a field trip, while taking in the scenic vistas of the Mississippi River valley bluffs.
State representative Gene Pelowski could be the trail guide. Steve Drazkowski, New Republican-Mazeppa, runs a shoe store there. President of the Minnesota Senate Jeremy Miller serves the area. Issue settled.
But who can Minnesota add to the list of heroes? Does the Gopher State have statues lounging around that it might add to the educational effort?
We considered Ignatius Donnelly and Joseph R Brown, both of whom should be more than garden-variety heroes in the Age of Fact Checks and Fake News, but couldn't find lovely statues of these historical gents. Disclosure: one of our romantic partner's great-great aunts married Brown. Heckova kinship network.
That leaves the most obvious choice: Depression-era Farmer-Labor Party Governor Floyd B. Olson. His statue is seen at the top of this post, participating in the 2017 Women's March at the Minnesota State Capitol.
Who was Floyd B. Olson? There's the bio at the Minnesota Historical Society:
Born to poor Scandinavian immigrants in north Minneapolis, Floyd Bjørnstjerne Olson had a checkered education, including one year at the University of Minnesota, a brief stint in the Industrial Workers of the World, and a degree from Northwest Law College. In 1919 he was named assistant attorney for Hennepin County; one year later, he became county attorney.
There, from 1920 to 1930, Olson took on the Ku Klux Klan and challenged the power of Minneapolis’s Citizen’s Alliance, earning strong support from racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and unions. A popular touch and oratorical gifts disguised a pragmatic streak that served him well.
Olson first eyed statewide office in 1924, when he left the Democratic Party for the new Farmer-Labor Party. He narrowly won the party’s nomination for governor but lost the race to incumbent Theodore Christianson. Olson did not run again until 1930, when he won by a landslide.
More rebel than radical, the savvy, popular governor spent his three terms pushing through legislation establishing the Department of Conservation, old age pensions, a graduated income tax, unemployment insurance, and public relief programs. He gradually shifted the Farmer Labor platform farther to the left as the Great Depression deepened. In 1934 he publicly declared: “I am not a liberal . . . I am what I want to be, a radical.” Yet when governing, he chose more moderate paths.
His response to Minneapolis’s 1934 Trucker’s Strike illustrated this moderation. In 1933 he successfully mediated a meatpackers’ strike in Austin but now, facing violent clashes between Minneapolis police and Teamsters, Olson failed to please both sides. He reluctantly declared martial law, alienating strikers and bosses. Torn between his allegiance to labor and his need to keep public order, Olson ultimately depended on federal pressure to force employers into accepting many of labor’s demands.
Facing gridlock in a legislature controlled by his opponents, Olson decided to run for higher office in 1935. Although ill, he began campaigning for U.S. senator but died from stomach cancer in 1936. Hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans publicly mourned his passing.
We've always appreciated this picture of the Minnesota National Guard at state fairgrounds before leaving for duty at the truck drivers' strike, Minneapolis in the historical society's collection:
That image alone should get the President to support the case for Olson.
Olson was also something of a shapeshifter. In 1933, the Jewish Telegraph reported in His Glib Yiddish Once “passed” Nordic Governor of Minnesota As Avrom Yitzcock Greenburg:
A tall, light-haired boy and two dark-haired youths had gone to St. Paul, Minn. to visit the daughters of an Orthodox Jewish family.
“This is Mr. Greenburg,” the dark-haired ones said, introducing their companion to the girls’ father, with whom they were already acquainted.
The father, however, became suspicious. He took the light-haired youth into the kitchen and began to question him. Speaking in Yiddish, he asked the youth his name.
“Mr. Greenburg,” came the reply. Then he asked for the first name.
“Avrom Yitzcock Greenburg,” he was told.
But the old gentleman was still suspicious and asked many more questions in Yiddish, until finally the youth asked the reason for this cross-examination.
“I think you are a Gentile,” the old man said.
The youth replied that his father was Jewish and that his mother was a Gentile. After that everything was all right.
That light-haired youth is now the governor of Minnesota, Floyd B. Olson. He is of Swedish and Norwegian descent.
As a prank, several of the Jewish chums with whom he grew up in North Minneapolis had taken him to this St. Paul home. The governor likes to recount the story in telling how most of his boyhood friends were Jews and that because of these early years spent in their company he learned to speak Yiddish fluently. . . .
Paul Olson, his father, came from Norway to Minneapolis and in 1890 met and married Ida Nelson, who had come from Sweden. Their son, born in 1891, was named Floyd Bjornstjerne Olson—the Bjornstjerne for Bjornstjerne Bjornson, Norway’s greatest lyric poet and orator.
This boy, born on Friday the 13th, Nov. 13, 1891, was destined to become the first Farmer-Labor governor of Minnesota.
The childhood prank morphed into empathy with his fellow citizens:
As Hennepin county attorney he became widely known for his ability as a prosecutor. While in that office he prosecuted the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan on charges of criminal libel and secured the first such conviction in the United States.
Unassuming in manner, this governor who speaks Yiddish has come to be known both in his own state and throughout the nation as a standard bearer “of the masses of the people.”
During the recent economic crisis he used his executive powers to forbid foreclosures of mortgages on farms and homes. When this power was questioned he caused the Minnesota legislature to enact a law preventing foreclosures, except in special cases, for a two-year period.
As governor, he has also established minimum wage scales for highway labor and fixed a maximum eight-hour day, six-day week.
He is an admirer of the great Jewish leaders of the world. A convincing speaker, he has lifted his voice at public protest meetings held in Minnesota against Nazi treatment of German Jews. . . .
So there you go: Floyd B. Olson was an opponent of National Socialism of the worst sort, not just of piece of rock styling a pussy hat.
President Trump mentioned that American Heroes don't have to have lived perfect lives. In Remembering Floyd B. Olson, Southwest Journal's Kirsten Delegard reports:
. . . The populist politician was reviled by many who saw him as a ruthless demagogue who had served at the behest of the city’s crime bosses.
Olson’s sensitivity to those on the social margins was endearing to some and enraging to others. The County Attorney was no saint. And his coming of age in a quarter known for its gambling houses, brothels and after-hours tippling spots made him suspect. Critics were quick to link Olson’s personal history to the Prohibition-era growth of crime under his watch.
Nobody's perfect.
We hope some local leaders and perhaps Governor Walz himself can pick up this modest proposal and submit the location of and the statue for consideration in the National Garden of American Heroes.
I profess in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing Winona's tourist trade, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. We don't even live in Minnesota anymore, and some of our neighbors in the Oceti Sakowin aren't happy any use of the Mount Rushmore area, given the history of the Black Hills. That's where our own governor proposes sticking it.
Governor Walz's press staff did not reply to a text query about the National Garden of American Heroes deadline.
Photo: Banner: Floyd B. Olson's statue participating in the Women's March in 2017; Middle section: the Minnesota National Guard masks up in 1934.
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