How It All Began
This project began in 1993 when a lobbyist asked Jean, "Who is that man, anyway?"  He was pointing to a statue he could see from the windows of his company's offices in Dupont Circle.  Jean was embarrassed to admit she hadn't a clue, despite the fact that she had lived in the neighborhood for over three years and had walked past the statue dozens of times.  That sparked the idea for a book on the subject of Washington's statues, but she never did anything practical about the concept.

The year 2000 changed all that.  Jean learned to design websites on homestead.com, purchased her second digital camera, started working for Tourmobile as a narrator, acquired a license as a DC tour guide, and met Michael.  As a way of introducing Michael to her beloved Washington, she walked him all over town, past many statues, memorials and monuments.  Together, they began documenting the statues on digital "film" and Jean finally put together her "book" -- in electronic form.

Photo Credits
All of the photos appearing on this site were taken by Jean or Michael using the trusty Sony Mavica camera.

Site Consulting and Good Advice
Trevor Noad saved us hours of time and frustration by taking over the nuts and bolts of designing and creating the dozens of web pages here, using very clever database integration. A programmer who has artistic sense and a designer who never once tried to impose his aesthetics on our pages...he is truly amazing and a joy to work with. We highly recommend him and his company, SurreyWebDesign.co.uk to anyone looking to launch a website of their own.

Historical Research Resources
Some of the information comes from the statues themselves, but a lot of them bear no indication of who the sculptor was or why or by whom the statue/memorial/monument was raised.  In certain cases, simply finding out who the statue represents was a challenge (consider the statue of Mexican War hero Winfield Scott, whose statue is simply labelled "SCOTT" ....gee, thanks).

Various websites provided biographies of some of the lesser-known individuals.  Particularly useful were www.biography.com and www.historychannel.com.

E.J. Applewhite's delightful little book, Washington Itself (now in its second edition) provided some great insights and stories.

We were delighted to find that someone actually did write a book very similar to Jean's original concept: Names of Washington DC by Dex Nilsson-- an unexciting title for an excellent book representing some heavy-duty research.

The classic work in this field (unfortunately out of print) is The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, DC by James M. Goode.

Jean would also like to thank the teachers at the public schools of Chicago, Illinois (at least those working in the 1950s) and those of the John Witherspoon Middle School in Princeton, New Jersey (circa 1960s).  To her astonishment, while she hadn't a clue on most of the military personnel, those worthy educators must have left something in her head, since she was able to dig through 40 years of dusty memories to easily identify such names as "Blackstone", "Burke", "Gompers", and (not surprisingly) "Witherspoon".

Jean's Personal Thanks
Hunting down, photographing and researching the subjects on this site has become a magnificent obsession. Julie was extraordinarily understanding about devoting a sizable proportion of her limited time in DC to amusing herself while Jean photographed everything in sight.  Thx, karma! *BHUGS*

Many of Jean's fellow narrators at Tourmobile were also very supportive in listening to reports of her latest discoveries in statues and DC history.  *smiles* go to Nate, Marty, Sandy, Eloise, and Arthur, and to dispatcher Kathleen.

Clyde tolerated long discussions of Jean's ideas about touring and training on seemingly endless tours aboard the Pennsylvania Avenue Shuttle and remained calm while Jean abandoned ship to photograph yet another historic site.  A particularly warm hug goes to Jim who waited cheerfully beside the bus at Arlington National Cemetery while the sun set one evening as Jean took 73 pictures.

And Finally...
None of this would have ever gotten started, let alone finished, without the cheerful assistance of Michael. He never once lost patience with hearing "I'll just be a few more minutes", "Want to go for a walk?" and the dreaded "Could you take a picture of....?" Gallons of Dad's Chili and endless hugs don't begin to repay the debt.

Thanks, everyone!