Three weeks before Christmas 2005, and I was on unpaid work duty, shepherding dignitaries around Washington for the umpteenth time. This Saturday, I was leading a group of Ukrainian accountants - who, in hindsight, could probably have helped with those T-accounts a few years later - on a tour, a chance to take in a few tourist sites before debits, credits, and Sarbanes-Oxley.
On 22nd Street, in front of the Church of the Pilgrims where Christina Cleary (“my first mate!”) tied the knot in “Wedding Crashers” stands a statue of Taras Shevchenko. Empirically, there’s no good reason for a statue like this; a Ukrainian poet is as out of place here as Babe Ruth would be in Algiers. Shevchenko is the “poet of Ukrainian Liberation” and is as revered a name in Kiev as Tolstoy in Moscow, Goethe in Frankfurt, or Meyer in Forks. But in DC? My Ukrainians were shocked: Why Shevchenko? Why Ukraine? Why build a statue to a guy you’ve never heard of, from a country few Americans know exist?
Because this is DC, and we memorialize everything.
And suddenly, that everything beckons. Five years after greeting Taras, fate and fortune have planted me back in my favorite city; and, as a career tourist homebound by new job and hefty loans, I need to reinvigorate the explorer gene and explore my District. Our District.
Thus was born The Obscure Monument Hunter. Out with Lincoln, Jefferson, and Washington (blasphemy!) in with the statues, plaques, buildings, parks, and other obscure monuments maligned by tour groups. Perhaps, if you believe Dan Brown, my trail will unmask the grand conspiracy that is secretly marionetting the UN. Or maybe it’ll just be fun.
And yes, this has been done before. You can look up most DC statues online, and find histories and tributes far more comprehensive than anything I care to scribble. That’s fine. I intend no comprehensiveness, no encyclopedic entries, no flattery a la James B. Goode or DCmonuments.com.
What I do want is to develop is my own take on my once and future city, know the touristless neighborhoods a bit better, and to satiate the tourist gene without draining my checking account. Come along.
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