David M. Shribman
John Adams and Samuel Adams are in, but John Quincy Adams isn’t. Alan Shepard and John Glenn are in, but Gus Grissom isn’t. Betsy Ross is in, but Ross Perot isn’t. John Wayne is in, but Wayne Newton isn’t. Andrew Jackson is in, but Michael Jackson and Jackson Pollock aren’t. Henry Ford is there, but Ralph Nader isn’t.
This eclectic group of Americans is among the scores Donald Trump has chosen for his National Garden of American Heroes statuary park. The president has named an interagency task force to begin planning what, in the last days of his first administration, he called “this new monument to our country’s greatness.” The budget and tax legislation he signed on July 4 provides $40 million for the project.
The nearly 250 people the president’s executive order nominated for the garden of heroes is a remarkable statement of American ingenuity — and diversity. The list came before his second-term attack on diversity initiatives and, if the original intention stands, would be one of the few administration initiatives in this area that does not cause a ruckus.
Of course, lists like this — or parlor games of similar themes — always prompt second guesses. Why, for example, is Ernest Hemingway on the list, but F. Scott Fitzgerald isn’t? Why is Irving Berlin in there and not Richard Rodgers or Oscar Hammerstein? Do you suppose the presence of Vince Lombardi there will prompt Jordon Hudson to wonder if Bill Belichick should be included some decades hence? Or is Lombardi there in part because Trump spent two years at Fordham, where the onetime Packers and Redskins coach was part of the Rams’ fabled football line known as the Seven Blocks of Granite?
Trump isn’t averse to removing officials, or even the chairman of the Federal Reserve, so it’s tantalizing to wonder how he might remove certain figures from his original list.
The presence of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an ardent supporter of abortion rights and opponent of all things Trump, is an especially juicy candidate for ghosting, unless you consider that her death eased the way for him to appoint Amy Coney Barrett to the high court.
Trump, who this summer agitated to return the names of the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians, nonetheless included Sacagawea, the Native American woman who guided the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark; Red Cloud, the Oglala Lakota leader; Tecumseh, the Shawnee leader; Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce leader; and Jim Thorpe, the Sac and Fox athlete who won an Olympic gold medal — but, inexplicably, not Pocahontas or Geronimo. (Lewis and Clark made the cut, but then again Trump carried 13 of the 14 current states they traversed before reaching the West Coast.)
And the president, as partisan as any chief executive who has occupied the White House, nonetheless included Democrats Grover Cleveland, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Daniel Inouye, Barbara Jordan and George Mitchell. A warrior against RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), he included several members of the GOP who were decidedly out of step with the Trump ethos, including William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, reformers who believed in strong government regulation; Rep. Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who voted against declaring war in both world wars; and Calvin Coolidge, who would deplored the language and comportment of Trump.
He deserves a pass on Dwight Eisenhower and Abraham Lincoln; they’re on everyone’s list. Ronald Reagan, though he wouldn’t pass MAGA muster today, is there, but Richard Nixon, who had two fewer impeachments than Trump, isn’t. (He resigned rather than be impeached.)
Trump administration officials may have, in a diversity purge, removed Jackie Robinson from a Pentagon website (and restored the baseball star after a public outcry), but he’s on the garden of heroes roster. So, too, are Black Americans such as Crispus Attucks, the first person killed in the 1770 Boston Massacre; Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; civil rights leaders Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, and Rosa Parks; musicians Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles; and Rep. Barbara Jordan, one of the Democrats nominated.
Omitted: Barack Obama. Also omitted: two men beaten in the cause of racial freedom, Sen. Charles Sumner and Rep. John Lewis.
The effort to identify heroes is a human impulse; statues and monuments dot every continent. Sometimes pyramids mark the tribute; other times, the honor is demonstrated by being buried, for example, in Westminster Abbey, the final resting place for Isaac Newton, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Johnson, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, even Stephen Hawking and Queen Elizabeth I — but not Queen Elizabeth II. Toronto’s walk of fame includes 200 Canadians whose names span 13 city blocks, including the actor William Shatner and the hockey star Gordie Howe, though he’s mostly associated with the Detroit Red Wings.
And cities like St. Louis, Dayton, Miami, Fargo and Los Angeles (at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theater) have walks of fame.
“It’s important to recognize people who made a difference because we — and future generations — need to remember that the things we value exist because of the past efforts and dedication of individuals,” said Nancy Polinsky Johnson, who is organizing an effort in Pittsburgh. “By recognizing them, we honor their contributions, keep their memory alive, and inspire people today to make a difference in their own way.”
Some of the early Pittsburgh selections include polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, steel and public library entrepreneur Andrew Carnegie, and everyone’s neighbor, Mr. Rogers. Artist Mary Cassatt, Steelers founder Art Rooney, and rap star Mac Miller will have to wait for another round.
These memorials are a window into how a country views its story. “They help define our identity as citizens,” said Matthew Davis, author of the forthcoming “A Biography of a Mountain,” about Mount Rushmore, where the president’s acolytes hope he joins George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln (all members of the Trump garden of heroes). “The memorials are a product of the time when they are created.”
So, too, the proposed Garden of Heroes.
At this point, a columnist is expected to cite Bertolt Brecht, who in his “Life of Galileo” says, “Unhappy the land that needs heroes.” That may have been the case in Germany in 1939, but it isn’t the case in America in 2025. We need heroes now, including — especially — the ones Trump may wish he hadn’t included.
A Swampscott High School Class of 1972 member, David M. Shribman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
