Waynesville to get 11-story eagle, National Military Artifacts Museum, near Fort Leonard Wood

Pulaski County Daily News ^ | 1/28/2010 | Darrell Todd Maurina

[darrellmaurina]

WAYNESVILLE, Mo. (Jan. 28, 2010) — Following months of work by heavy equipment on the northwest corner of the Exit 156 overpass at Ichord Avenue, Waynesville city officials have announced that what’s now bare dirt and rock will soon become the site of the National Military Artifacts Museum. Partners in the Waynesville museum project include the owner of the Branson veterans museum; a companion $6 million hotel is under contract and will be added later, city officials said. The $9.5 million museum project in the West Gate Subdivision will feature 16 life-size sculptures by sculptor Fred Hoppe, memorial walls with the names of all servicemembers killed in action for World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and other 20th Century conflicts. However, the most visible part of the museum will be an 11-story tall copper and bronze eagle, scheduled to be added in 2011 and expected to be visible from up to five miles away.

[BallandPowder]

Powder..patch..ball FIRE!

Cool, I drive past there all the time and will be waiting for it to open!

[There You Go Again]

Since we are trillions in debt....I thought the other day......”Hey we need an 11 story bronze eagle...” That’ll help us all.......What a waste of money!

[Lockbar]

I was at Fort Lost-in-the-Woods for basic training in the early 1970’s. We weren't ever allowed to leave base and go to Waynesville because the Base Commander considered the town to be almost completely off-limits.

[kaylar]

< grumble>”...should be 11 storey eagle...” </ grumble>

[darrellmaurina]

It’s private investment, not government money ... this project may or may not be a good idea, but under capitalist economics, people have the right to risk their own money for a project they think is valuable or a good financial investment.

[darrellmaurina]

I understand about how bad things were here in the St. Robert-Waynesville area years ago. My father was here about two decades earlier than you were, and things got even worse later on. The time period you were here in the 1970s was just about as bad as it ever got, when Fort Leonard Wood got national media attention and the state attorney general, later U.S. Senator Danforth, stepped in to clean up the area. (In fairness, similar stuff happened in places like Phenix City, Ala., during that period.) I think you'd be surprised how much things have improved here with the home of not only basic training for engineers but also the full Engineer School relocated from Fort Belvoir and the Military Police School and Chemical School (now renamed CBRN School), relocated with the BRACing of Fort McClellan. The civilian community at this point is composed primarily of military retirees, veterans, families, and Army brats who chose to stay here, and that's made a huge difference.

[darrellmaurina]

Thank you for raising the story/storey spelling issue. I'm picky on spelling issues (I was a National Spelling Bee contestant years ago) so I take these concerns seriously.

The Associated Press Stylebook does not address this specifically, but as with other matters of this type, the rule is that “For spelling, style and usage questions not covered in this stylebook, consult Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, published by Wiley. Use the first spelling listed in Webster's New World College Dictionary unless a specific exception is listed in this book.”

Webster's New World College Dictionary considers “storey” to be a British variant spelling.

Unless someone can show me differently, it appears the practice of my editors for many years of spelling “story” rather than “storey” was correct — unless I'm working for a British (or perhaps Canadian or Australian) newspaper.

[swmobuffalo]

Let’s hope the admission price is cheaper than that one in Branson.

[kaylar]

I swear on my life-no, on my dog's life, which is of even greater importance to me than my own :-)-that I saw 'storey' in real estate listings here in the small town USA (Missouri, to be exact) back in the 1970s. I was a child, and I asked my mom about it (she was a secretary at a real estate agency) and she told me that it was "Storey if it's a building, story if it's in a book" to keep people from being confused. Like I say though, that was decades ago : Maybe at some point in the 1980s, newspapers phased out the "storey" spelling, which my spell check is rejecting with the Red Squiggly Line of Doom...So it certainly seems that 'storey' is certainly no longer in use in the USA now . :-( I don't care : I use 'storey' for buildings and I'll continue to do so, as using story for both buildings and fiction works just seems wrong to me.

[darrellmaurina]

Personally, that rationale for storey/story makes sense to me. We have more than enough words in English with totally different etymologies and definitions that have, over generations of pronounciation and spelling changes, become identical.

There’s a number of things in the Associated Press Stylebook I don’t like or with which I don’t agree, and the same is true about numerous changes in the English language in the last 20 to 30 years. But given that the only alternatives to a living and changing language are a dead language like Latin or centralized control by a cultural elite over acceptable usage (i.e., France), I’m not sure I have a consistent reason to support a free market in economics while objecting to freedom of choice in how people choose to write and speak.

I guess I need to just trust the decisions of hundreds of millions of English speakers about how best to use the language we share, even if sometimes the decisions don’t seem to make much logical sense to me.

[commish]

I spent a year in Waynesville, Mo one weekend. If there is a dark spot furthest from the bright lights of civilization it is Waynesville.

[Jed Wiggens]

find out if it is a federal recovery act bond issue...

[Jed Wiggens]

4 words for you:
Goldman Sachs
Bernie Madoff
The investors are already DEAD, but they don’t know it yet.
A fool and his money soon part and he’s about finding money!
More Later...