ABSTRACT

During World War II, the Federal Security Agency's Recreation Division and Committee on Physical Fitness endorsed living memorials in its efforts to promote fitness, preparedness, and patriotism. On one level, adding World War II inscriptions to fighting doughboy sculptures also may have served as propaganda for the Federal Security Agency (FSA)'s cause. After World War II, veterans' groups adopted Perth Amboy's doughboy as a tribute to a new generation of soldiers. R. Tait McKenzie's Girard College First World War Memorial in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, though not a fighting soldier, is another monument that continues to "live" within its small boarding school community well after the generation by whom it was dedicated graduated and moved away. The act of walking to and finding the tombstone of Frank Buckles, the last surviving doughboy, at Arlington can be compared to the process of finding a name on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial.