A Rendezvous With Destiny, Cast in Bronze: FDR memorial takes on new meaning in a time of crisis
WASHINGTON -- The five life-sized bronze men line up, in hats and overcoats, their shoulders slumped. Outside a closed door, they wait for bread or, perhaps, a job.
Eva Durak, 31 years old, slipped into the queue of statues and assumed a glum pose appropriate to the Great Depression, while a friend snapped a picture. It wasn't hard for her to fake the misery. Business at the restaurant where Ms. Durak tends bar is off about 75%, she figures.
"We're almost there," she told her friend, glancing at the bread line. "People are very afraid. I am, too."
With financial markets in turmoil and the economy screeching to a halt, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., is taking on new meaning. These days, when visitors wander through the monument, reading FDR's words to a nation troubled by poverty and war, they see eerie parallels.
They take their places in the bronze bread line and pose for photos. "Get in line at the poor house," Marlene Torres-Vogel, 56, a tennis-club manager from Englewood, N.J., instructed her husband. "We're living the past now in the present."
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Eva Durak, 31 years old, slipped into the queue of statues and assumed a glum pose appropriate to the Great Depression, while a friend snapped a picture. It wasn't hard for her to fake the misery. Business at the restaurant where Ms. Durak tends bar is off about 75%, she figures.
"We're almost there," she told her friend, glancing at the bread line. "People are very afraid. I am, too."
With financial markets in turmoil and the economy screeching to a halt, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., is taking on new meaning. These days, when visitors wander through the monument, reading FDR's words to a nation troubled by poverty and war, they see eerie parallels.
They take their places in the bronze bread line and pose for photos. "Get in line at the poor house," Marlene Torres-Vogel, 56, a tennis-club manager from Englewood, N.J., instructed her husband. "We're living the past now in the present."