Taylor played key role in memorial
Fred Taylor, the former state representative from Uniontown who died recently, was unceremoniously bumped from office, and I’m partially to blame. Sorry about that, Fred, you deserved better.
Let me explain. During the time I was president of the committee that built the George C. Marshall Memorial Plaza in Uniontown, a huge state grant came our way.
I say huge, but it wasn’t all that big as far as state money goes — $500,000 — although large enough to cause us considerable grief and cost Fred re-election.
It’s all about context: our half million came out of the pot of gold reserved for state legislators to toss at problems back home in their districts without having to go through the often laborious process of actually getting a bill passed or having the item included in the state budget.
This so-called “walking-around-money” — WAM, for short — was the object of some ridicule by reformers who viewed the secret, behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing associated with WAMs as deeply corrupting: an offense against good government.
The same level of scorn, you might recall, was directed a few years later at federal “earmarks:” the practice by which congressmen and senators doled out money for pet projects that frequently wouldn’t have stood the test of hearings or found their way into the regular budget.
Both WAMs and earmarks are no more. Considering the problems we have had since passing budgets both in Washington and Harrisburg, you tell me whether their demise was such a good thing. From time immemorial, democratic politicians have greased the wheels of government by trading favors, and WAMs and earmarks were pretty good at stoking the deliberately creaky machinery of divided government.
But I pontificate. Back to Fred Taylor, who reached out to the Friends of Marshall, the name we gave our group, in the late 1980s. He was in synch with our goal. He told me in February 1989 that “not only do I believe it is proper to remember Gen. Marshall for the tremendous contribution he made to our nation, it is especially important that we illustrate the role his early upbringing played” in his career.
Fred signed off with the hope that the would-be memorial would help Uniontown revive and grow.
That summer he got us a $40,000 WAM. Then things got hairy.
We estimated the final price of a proper tribute to Marshall would cost some $2 million. We needed a first-class design, which required a first-class design team. We looked to a firm in State College which had won the competition for the Korean War memorial on The Mall in Washington.
The more immediate goal was to secure a spot for the memorial. We looked at several locations, although only one was ever seriously considered. That was where the plaza eventually went — at Five-Corners, across Main Street from VFW Post 47, which occupied the site where Marshall was born and raised.
The World War I doughboy statue was there, but otherwise the property was in terrible shape; an ugly confection of broken concrete and an old, abandoned service station. Except for the statue, the property was in private hands, which meant forking out money for its purchase. The owner wasn’t giving it away.
We looked to Fred to get us some cash. We pointed out to him that the state of Virginia supported the Marshall Museum and Archives in Lexington to the tune of $300,000 a year. We asked for $100,000 a year for the next five years.
Fred said politically that just wasn’t possible. His colleagues would never sit still for such largesse spread over so many years. He said one $500,000 grant was more like it. He could possibly do that.
My own feeling was we were just not ready for all that money. Fred insisted it was the only way it could be done. He subsequently negotiated a deal with the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, a Philly lawmaker by the name of Dwight Evans.
We got our $500,000. What followed was a flurry of bad publicity and two state audits. At times I hoped never to hear the term WAM again. We became a punching bag for a feckless auditor general.
Both she and the media insisted the money was political graft, a regular boondoggle.
It became the issue in Fred’s re-election campaign. I’m not sure he ever faced such opposition before. His campaign skills were rusty. Floundering badly, he logged several frantic phone hoping for rescue. He eventually lost.
Democracy can be such a cruel business, even when you take the side of the angels.
I don’t know if Fred Taylor regretted his efforts on behalf of Marshall Plaza. I hope not. I hope he was proud of both his role and of the plaza. He deserved to be.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books, “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.