Photo by kimberlyfaye

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Mayor Vince Gray are joining forces to preserve local control over the District’s memorial to soldiers who fought and died in World War I. Though some in Congress would like to see the District of Columbia War Memorial be converted to a national monument, Norton and Gray aren’t having any of it.

The peristyle doric dome, erected in 1931, commemorates the 455 District residents who died in the war between April 1917 and November 1918. Sitting just off Independence Avenue in West Potomac Park, the memorial, which is administered by the National Park Service, is one of many local tributes to World War I around the country. It was closed for over a year before reopening last November following a $3.6 million facelift paid for by the 2009 stimulus act.

Though the National Mall is home to tributes to the veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, there is no national memorial to those who fought and died in the 20th century’s first great conflict. Additionally, a law passed in 2003 effectively outlawed any new memorials on the Mall.

But Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), is sponsoring a bill that would convert the D.C. War Memorial into a site honoring the entire nation’s war dead. Poe’s bill, named for Frank Buckles, who died last February as the last American veteran of World War I, would also turn a memorial in Kansas City, Mo., into a national World War I museum.

Even though the D.C. War Memorial is overseen by NPS, it was paid for with District funds when it was constructed between 1924 and 1931, and Norton and Gray are adamant that because the District’s World War I veterans “served and died without a vote in Congress, the D.C. War Memorial also has come to symbolize all of the District’s residents who fought and died without a vote,” the delegate said in a press release today.

At a press conference with Gray earlier today at the Rayburn House Office Building, Norton charged her Republican colleagues with having gone from “denying the city votes in Congress to trying to take the city’s memorial to its war veterans and war dead.”

Norton is scheduled to testify on Poe’s bill tomorrow in front a House Natural Resources subcommittee on national parks. “District officials and residents have every reason and right to resist efforts to commandeer a memorial dedicated to their veterans and war dead,” she will say in her testimony.

Last year, Norton introduced a bill that would state that “the sense of the House of Representatives” is to build a national World War I memorial.