File:Mrs. Forrest Gertrude Kibler General Chairman UDC to Senator Richard B. Russell U.S. Senate April 1, 1963 (37dae63a-48bb-494f-93f2-f8d2967153ca).jpg

White paper with typed black text

Hon. Richard B. Russell U.S. Senator from Georgia Senate Office Building Washington 25, D.C. Dear Senator Russell: Enclosed is a copy of my report as General Chairman of the Committee for Promotion of the Monument to be Erected at Gettysburg for the passing of the Confederate Army and Navy. The last Confederate veteran died in December, 1959. The last Union Army veteran died in 1957, and already the Sons of the G.A.R. have erected a monument to the passing of the Union Army. On the occasion of the U.D.C.’s erection of the beautiful monument to the South in Arlington Cemetery in June, 1914, the U.S. War Department stated that it reserves the right to place the foundations of monuments in U.S. Military Parks (see The History of the United Daughters of the Confederacy). The enclosed design of 14 columns, each column representing one of the 14 states with the name of the state at the top, has been submitted to me by Marietta Memorials, Inc., successors to McNeel. This design has found favor with the Governors, Centennial Commission, and members of my Committee, but we have been told by Bryant Baker, A. Thomas Bradbury, Architect for Georgia, and Edward A. Moulthrop, Chairman of the Art Commission for the State of Georgia, that the figure must be 7’6” and the columns must be raised to be architecturally correct and that the foundation would be expensive. I am asking you whether or not the War Department is still financing the foundations of such memorials in U.S. Military Parks. If I raise the full quota, I will have only $36,000, and I believe that we could get this done if the War Department would finance the foundation. I have succeeded in bringing about a unanimous vote that the monument is to be of Georgia blue granite from Elberton, the figure of a private in bronze. I am pulling hard that it be done by Marietta Memorials, Inc. Mr. Reese is the designer. I am having stiff opposition from two women high in the U.D.C., one from New York and the other from Washington, D.C. They want a New York sculptor to do the job. I have been told that we do not need a high price sculptor as the figure is to be of bronze, a private in Confederate uniform. We need a good architect, and the company can do the rest. The above mentioned two U.D.C. members want a different design, but as the Governor of Missouri said, he wanted to see the name of Missouri at the head of one of those columns. If you can help me do anything to get the cost down, I may get the 14 columns after all. Thank you, and the best of wishes, Sincerely, Gertrude Lockridge Kibler Mrs. Forrest Kibler

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