FDR Wanted Only a Simple Monument

As noted in the images below, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted nothing more than a simple marker placed outside the National Archives in Washington.

In these harsh economic times are we really honoring his wishes by raising $20 million in donations for a monument / memorial park when the funds could better spent on social programs geared to putting those out of work and hungry back on their feet? Perhaps duplicating the below monument and placque would be more appropriate and placing it at the Southern most point of the island facing the United Nations.






Each photo can be enlarged by double clicking the image. The original photos were shot by VotePrime and can be found on Flickr HERE.

Text:

"In September 1941 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called his friend, Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter, to the White House and asked the Justice to remember the wish he then expressed:

"If any memorial is to be erected to me, I know exactly what I should want it to be. I should like it to consist of a block about the size of this (putting his hand on the desk) and placed in the center of that green plot in front of the Archives Building. I don't care what it is made of, whether limestone or granite or whatnot, but I want it to be plain without ornamentation, with the simple carving, 'In Memory of _____'."

A small group of living associates of the President, on April 12, 1965, the twentieth anniversary of his death, fulfilled his wish by providing and dedicating this modest memorial."