To the Editors:

Bruce Cole’s scathing piece, “A Monumental Shame,” which you actually accepted for publication (December 2014), is another of his dyspeptic and distorted diatribes against the proposed memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Because Mr. Cole uses his position on the Eisenhower Memorial Commission to insult the intelligence and integrity of his fellow commissioners, the article might better have been called, “Boring from Within.”

Mr. Cole was named a commissioner by President Obama in 2013, more than three years after Frank Gehry’s draft design had been approved by a unanimous vote of the twelve-member Commission. There is something to be said for unanimity, representing as it did a bipartisan spread of Mr. Cole’s insultees: four senators, four representatives, and four “civilians,” including Ike’s grandson, Prof. David Eisenhower, who had been appointed by President Clinton in 2000 as the family’s chosen representative. With regard to the design, he carried more weight than any other commissioner, other than the chairman. That is, he and the chairman were the only commissioners who served on the GSA’s evaluation panel, along with a blue-ribbon group of independent architects and designers representing a wide geographic and aesthetic range.

While the Gehry design may not have been David Eisenhower’s first choice, he approved it as a member of the GSA panel and voted for it later, as a commissioner. So to say, as Bruce Cole does, that Prof. Eisenhower resigned in opposition to the design is not only misleading but also questions his