After the Great Depression and after public urging a nationwide public competition was held to determine a design for a memorial that would honor President Thomas Jefferson's bold vision for westward expansion for America.

On Memorial Day I was out floating on Lake Norman and came across Denny Hamlin. We struck up a conversation and one of the first things we were talking about was how much it helped him when he started racing the Cup car and how much it helped his Nationwide program.

When I was building the Vietnam Memorial I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war because from my point of view you don't pry into other people's business.

It is curious how from time immemorial man seems to have associated the idea of evil with beauty shrunk from it with a sort of ghostly fear while at the same time drawn to it by force of its hypnotic attraction.

But we cannot rely on memorials and museums alone. We can tell ourselves we will never forget and we likely won't. But we need to make sure that we teach history to those who never had the opportunity to remember in the first place.