Can This Giant Be Replaced?

"The Awakening" sculpture at Hains Point depicts a giant bursting out of the ground. Some of my readers would rather the giant was burrowing into the ground. That way it would be hard to dislodge him and ship him off to his new home: National Harbor.

"Can't we start a movement to keep it?" Southeast Washington's Marci Hilt asked. "I can't imagine Hains Point without 'The Awakening.' "

Imagine it you must, Marci. But what should take its place? That's what I asked readers.

Something with hands-on appeal to kids, wrote Anne Rensberger, who for years was a licensed D.C. tour guide. One morning as she shepherded a group of school kids on their eighth-grade class trip to war memorials and Arlington National Cemetery, one boy commented to her, "This is sure a sad town, isn't it?"

Wrote Anne: "I knew then it was time to take that class for a 'recess' at 'The Awakening,' where they could escape the gravity of the morning. There I turned the kids loose and let them crawl up and slide down the giant's knee and sit in its hand for memorable pictures."

She thinks whatever replaces it should have similar kid appeal and climbability and be contentious enough to get eighth-graders debating with their chaperons on its artistic merits.

Tom Metcalf proposes a competition for an interactive sculpture. Models of the finalists could be displayed somewhere such as the National Building Museum, and the region's schoolchildren could vote on the one they like best. The winner would be built and the process repeated every 10 years, to give each generation of kids a sculpture of its own.

Perhaps the National Park Service would be amenable to Cynthia Wood's suggestion. She thinks Hains Point should have a memorial for U.S. Park Police officers such as her father, William Martin Cronan. "What better place to have one than on park land?" wrote the Laurel resident.

Bryan Purcell of the District suggested a memorial to the victims of the Air Florida crash in 1982 or to the slaves who tried to escape Washington in 1848 aboard the Pearl, a schooner.

Bethesda's Michael Bartlett is a garden architect who believes what Hains Point needs is something he would call "the American Biology Pond." It would be a 9,000-square-foot microcosm of the nation's natural diversity, with trees and plants native to the different regions of the United States and ponds containing wildlife from across the nation.

The District's Kathie Shahan has strong feelings about what shouldn't be built at Hains Point. "All over D.C," she wrote, "we have statues commemorating men on horseback -- almost exclusively white -- who are famous because of the battles in which they fought and in which they killed or caused other men to be killed. . . . Let's hope the Park Service can be truly visionary for a change and replace ['The Awakening'] with a sculpture commemorating life and love and nature -- or peace. But please, no more war and death."

In my column a few weeks back, a reader suggested moving the Titanic Memorial from Southwest to Hains Point. Not so fast, wrote Bethesda's Jim Silman, founder of the Men's Titanic Society. On April 14, the 22 members of the society held their annual reception and dinner at the Watergate Hotel, which overlooks the original site of the memorial. At 12:30 a.m. on the 15th, they proceeded to the memorial for a wreath-laying ceremony. Then each member gave a champagne toast "to those brave men."

First erected in 1931, the memorial was put in storage to make way for the Kennedy Center.

Wrote Jim: "Its current home in Southwest D.C. might be considered out of the way and somewhat obscure compared with the original site, but the location does provide a beautiful setting. . . . It's comfortable there. Another move might seem as if it were forever searching for a home. Perhaps it has found it."

Capt. John Smith, White Courtesy Phone

Don't miss today's special Post section on the anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. It's chock-full of interesting stuff. Working on it allowed me to fulfill a lifelong dream of mine to wear a doublet.