Corporations shun funding for Flight 93 memorial rite

STONYCREEK, Pa. -- The return of the mourners who lost family members in the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 was put together with grand planning, ceaseless effort and relatively little corporate financing.

Kudos to FedEx for bucking the notorious tradition of America's wealthy who have a reputation for being miserly tightwads.

Excerpted from The History of the Statue of Liberty:

Americans seemed receptive to the idea of a statue dedicated to "Liberty Enlightening the World" (the official name for the statue), but no one was willing to make a commitment of money or a building site.
In 1874... they decided its cost should be shared: France would pay for the statue; America would pay for its pedestal and foundation. A fund-raising committee called the Franco-American Union was formed, with members from both nations.
An appeal for funds to underwrite the cost of creating the statue was launched in French newspapers in September 1875.
Elaborate fundraising events were staged: a banquet at the Grand Hotel de Louvre in November 1875; a gala benefit performance of a new Liberty Cantata by French composer Charles Gounod at the Paris Opera. But money was slow in coming. Enough was collected to begin work on the statue, but the goal of completing it in time for America's 100th anniversary was impossible.
Bartholdi decided that if the statue could not be completed in time for America's centennial celebration, at least the raised arm and torch could be finished for showing at the International Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. While 300,000 Frenchmen paid to watch the work in progress, 20 men worked 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, to meet the deadline. But, even with "overtime," the section was not finished in time for the opening of the exhibition, although it did arrive in the fall, before the fair closed.
The 30-foot arm of Liberty finally arrived in Philadelphia in August 1876. For 50 cents, a visitor could climb a steel ladder leading to the balcony surrounding the torch. This unique experience created a good deal of enthusiasm for the project, since Liberty would be the first statue one could climb inside.
Returning to France, Bartholdi set himself a new goal: to complete the statue's head for the opening of the Paris World's Fair in May 1878. Unfortunately, Liberty was to be a lady who was always late. The gleaming copper head was not finished until June. When her head finally did appear at the fair, "My daughter Liberty," as Bartholdi had begun calling her, was a sensation. But she wasn't sensational enough to solve the never-ending problem of raising the money needed to complete her construction. Finally, someone with the Franco-American Union had an inspiration; they would hold a lottery to raise funds.
Since very few contributions for building the statue were coming from France's moneyed elite, the idea of engaging the public's attention with a lottery was a brilliant one. The prizes were substantial: a silver plate set worth 20,000 francs (about $20,000); jewelry fashioned from pearls and gems, worth 5,000 francs; plus two works by Bartholdi, a terra cotta copy of a statue honoring the military engineer the Marquis Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, and a painting called The Wave.
Additional funds were raised in a manner worthy of contemporary merchandising techniques: a signed and numbered collection of clay models entitled "Models of the Committee," bearing the Franco-American Union's seal, were sold for 1,000 francs each in France and for $3,000 each in America. The buyer's name could be engraved in the clay before the statue was baked.
By the end of 1879, about 250,000 francs had been raised for the statue's construction. Enough, most people thought, to complete the work.
All the while, Bartholdi assumed that the statue's base was also nearing completion. He assumed too much.
While construction of the statue was nearing completion in France, little was happening on the American side of the Atlantic.
The American press continued to be critical of the project, especially of its cost. They simply couldn't understand why the pedestal for the statue should cost as much as the statue itself. Congress rejected a bill appropriating $100,000 for the base. New York did approve a grant of $50,000, but the expenditure was vetoed by the governor.
Many Americans outside of New York considered it New York's statue. "Let New York pay for it," they said, while America's newly rich self-made millionaires were saying and contributing nothing. The American half of the Franco-American Union, led by William M. Evarts, held the usual fund-raising events, but public apathy was almost as monumental as the statue itself.
By 1884, after years of fund-raising, only $182,491 had been collected, and $179,624 had been spent. It took the intervention of Joseph Pulitzer and the power of the media to make a difference.
Joseph Pulitzer was a Hungarian immigrant who fought in the Civil War, be-came a successful journalist, and married a wealthy woman. In 1883, when he bought a financial newspaper called the World, he already owned the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. When he heard that the Statue of Liberty was about to die from lack of funds, he saw his chance to take advantage of three distinct opportunities: to raise funds for the statue, to increase his newspaper's circulation, and to blast the rich for their selfishness.
Pulitzer set the fund-raising goal of the World at $100,000. In its pages he taunted the rich (thereby increasing the paper's circulation among working-class people) and firmly planted the notion that the statue was a monument not just for New York City but, indeed, for all of America.
Perhaps Pulitzer's cleverest ploy was the promise to publish the name of every single contributor in the pages of the World, no matter how small the contribution. The editorial that opened the fund-raising campaign set its tone. He wrote: "The World is the people's paper and it now appeals to the people to come forward and raise the money [for the statue's pedestal]." The statue, he said, was paid for by "the masses of the French people. Let us respond in like manner. Let us not wait for the millionaires to give this money. It is not a gift from the millionaires of France to the millionaires of America, but a gift of the whole people of France to the whole people of America."
The circulation of the World increased by almost 50,000 copies. African-American newspapers joined in the effort, encouraging their readers to contribute to a monument that would, in part, commemorate the end of slavery. So the money poured in, from single-dollar donations from grandmothers to pennies from the piggybanks of schoolchildren.
On June 15, 1885, the Statue of Liberty - inside 214 wooden packing crates - arrived at Bedloe's Island.
On August 11, 1885, the front page of the World proclaimed, "ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!" The goal had been reached, and slightly exceeded, thanks to more than 120,000 individual contributions.
On October 25, 1886, Bartholdi and his wife, accompanied by Count Ferdinand-Marie de Lesseps, chairman of the French Committee, arrived in America. They were greeted by the American Committee and Joseph Pulitzer. At Bedloe's Island, surrounded by newspaper reporters recording his words for posterity, Bartholdi simply said, "The dream of my life is accomplished."
From 1886 to 1902, the Statue of Liberty was maintained by the Lighthouse Board, an agency of the federal government, in conjunction with the Army and the American Committee. In 1901, the War Department assumed responsibility, making some much-needed repairs and improvements to the statue and the island.
In 1916, the World once again raised its voice to raise funds on behalf of the statue. This time, the goal was to floodlight the statue at night. The paper's readers contributed $30,000, and the torch was also redesigned in glass.
President Calvin Coolidge declared the Statue of Liberty to be a national monument on October 15, 1924. In 1933 the NPS took over administration and maintenance of the statue.
The French-American Committee for the Restoration of the Statue of Liberty was established in 1981. Following an initial diagnostic report for the NPS, it was determined that substantial work needed to be done. The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation was then formed to raise the needed funds and to oversee the restoration of both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Again, as in the past, private contributions were the backbone of the foundation's success: More than $295 million was collected, with $86 million going to the statue's restoration.
On July 4, 1986, America threw a birthday party for the Statue of Liberty that will not soon be forgotten. With a golden sunset glowing in the background, President Ronald Reagan declared, "We are the keepers of the flame of liberty; we hold it high for the world to see."

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