Monument Of States, Kissimmee
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
The Monument of States was created by Dr. Charles Bressler-Pettis in 1942 shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Bressler-Pettis was a past district governor of Lions Club International and a promoter of local tourism, and he saw this monument as a way to symbolize American unity during World War II. Dr. Bressler-Pettis wrote letters to every state governor asking them to send him rocks from their states. A year passed by and then the donations began to arrive from governors, a prime minister, the President of the United States and even tourists. The stones included small boulders, fossils, chunks of quartz, blocks of native granite, and parts of old buildings. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a rock from his Hyde Park estate, and so did Governor Rexford Guy Tugwell from Puerto Rico and Prime Minister MacKenzie King from Canada. There is also a piece of petrified wood from Arizona, a meteorite, a palm tree, a cannonball from Michigan, bottles, buffalo horns from Montana, a skull, a rock from the Sahara, glacier eggs, a petrified apple from Wisconsin, an etched outline of a map of the U.S., a buffalo, a map of Holland, a star for Texas and more.
Images
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
The cornerstone of the monument was laid at the Kissimmee Lakefront Park with a patriotic speech given by Mayor Ellis F. Davis. Then, the rest of the rocks were mortared together into a 50-foot-tall pyramid shaped of colored concrete slabs. There are about twenty-two rows of stones cemented in concrete reinforced with steel rails that wrap around the monument. Each slab was also inscribed with the donor’s name and location; for example, “Harvard Medical School”, “Idaho, Chase A. Clark Gov. 1941-42,” “Wisconsin Dairy Land.” The top slab is inscribed with the word “unique”, which is a good description of the Monument of States. And, for the peak of the monument Dr. Bressler-Pettis sculpted the words “Tourist Paradise” beneath a three-foot concrete planet Earth topped by a 562-pound concrete bald eagle with a six-foot wingspan; all cast by Dr. Bressler-Pettis himself with the help of J. O. Fischer and artist Don Lancaster. At the very top of the monument, an American flag flies on a twenty-foot tall flag pole. Building the 50-foot monument took 102 bags of cement. The victory walk surrounding the monument is inscribed with the names of the 473 donors who each contributed a bag of cement for the total project including the walk-way. The completed project weighed 30 tons and was dedicated as Monument of States on March 28, 1943, with a speech given by Senator Claude Pepper.
Sources
Carlson, Charlie, Moran, Mark and Sceurman, Mark. Weird Florida: Your Travel Guide to Florida’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. 2005
Robison, Jim. Kissimmee, 125 Years Of Its People And Progress. 2008
Sandler, Roberta. A brief guide to Florida’s monuments and memorials. 2008
Kirby, Doug, Smith, Ken, and Wilkins, Mike. “Monument of States.” 1996 1. Roadside America. Web. 27 Feb. 2017 http://www.roadsideamerica.com
Holland, Karl E. “’Monument of States’ roadside attraction in Kissimmee, Florida.” 1991 1. Florida Memory. Web. 27 Feb. 2017 http://www.floridamemory.com
Srl., Valica. “Monument of Sates.” LANDMARKS AND HISTORIC STATES. 2017 1. Places Online. Web. 27 Feb. 2017 http://www.placesonline.com
Hetherington, Alma. “The River Of The Long Water.” The Mickler House Publishers. 1980
Goode, Carol. “A UNIFIED AMERICA-LIKE A ROCK-TRIBUTE TO NATIONS UNITY BEAMS WITH RENEWED LUSTER-AN EFFORT TO SAVE NATIONAL LANDMARKS HAS HELPED RESTORE THE MONUMENT OF STATES.” THE ORLANDO SENTINEL. 9 Nov. 2001, FLORIDA, OSCEOLA SENTINEL. 1. NewsBank. Web. 27 Feb. 2017 http://infoweb.newsbank.com