James E. Young
speaker
89 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 16 Feb
James E. Young’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Oh, thank you for having me.
All of the above.
It ends up being very fluid, but there really has been a tradition and traditional protocols as well as laws.
Most of the central memorials to former presidents and to deceased presidents, which is also part of the tradition, very rare is the memorial to a living president, always deceased.
But there are customs, such as families wanting to create organizations to remember the past loved one, like Ulysses S. Grant's widow really initiated Grant's tomb up in the upper Manhattan at 122nd Street and Riverside Drive.
Other presidents have also recommended shapes and sizes for their memorials and what they might be.
I think one of the most touching memorials to FDR was the one he described himself to his good friend, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
In his words, he said, if any memorial is erected to me, I know exactly what I should like it to be.
I should like it to consist of a block about the size of this
putting his hand on his desk, and placed in the center of that green plot in front of the archive building.
I don't care what it is made of, whether limestone or granite or whatnot, but I want it to be plain without any ornamentation with a simple carving in memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
No, it's not clear.
In fact, what I've heard, the official name cannot be changed without an act of Congress.
In fact, Congress had to pass the law to create it.
And it's a wonderful memorial.
And this brings us back to both the origins of memorials.
and how and why they would be mandated.
Now, in this case, the Kennedy Center is very much a way to commemorate JFK's and actually the First Lady's devotion to the arts during his administration, so that JFK would be remembered as a great supporter of the arts, the commitment his administration made to the arts, of course, Jackie's commitment to the arts as well.
And so this makes it maybe one of the most poignant and appropriate of all presidential memorials, I think.
And then, to have a new president come along, slash funding to the arts, defund the National Endowment for the Arts, among many other arts agencies, and then insist single-handedly to add his name to the memorial,
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