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American Morning
Problem in Iowa Deciding What to Put on State Quarter
Aired July 11, 2002 - 08:54 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: The debate over what will eventually appear over the Iowa quarter is no corny tail. Corny, get it? Since the U.S. mint began issuing state quarters in 1999, about 20 states have been represented. Georgia has one with peaches on it. Massachusetts has the minuteman. And while most states have decided upon their symbol with relative ease, there is a problem in Iowa.
Bruce Burkhardt looks at both sides of this coin.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What comes to mind when you think of the state of Iowa? Corn, silos, maybe the Grant wood painting, "American Gothic," or is it the Sullivan Brothers?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The loss of five people from one family really galvanized American sentiment.
BURKHARDT: 1942, the war was still young. Five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa -- Joseph, Frank, Albert, Madison and George -- the Sullivan brothers, all enlisted in the Navy and served together on the "USS Juno." In the battle of Gualo (ph) Canal, their ship was torpedoed by the Japanese, and all five brothers perished, generally considered the greatest loss to one family in U.S. military history.
The story captivated the nation, thanks to newsreels at the time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the brothers' parents, Mr. And Mrs. Thomas F. Sullivan.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know now what my five boys meant when they said, keep your chin up, mother.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, which will it be? Army or Navy?
(END VIDEO CLIP) BURKHARDT: And naturally, Hollywood jumped on the story with a tear-jerking movie, "The Fighting Sullivans," released in 1944 while the war was still raging.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've always been together since we were born, you might say, and that's how we want to go into the Navy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it's like this -- we always done our fighting as a kind of team. We Sullivans stick together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURKHARDT: "We stick together." The Sullivan motto still lives, as seen on this design that a lot of Iowans would like to see on their new quarter.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By honoring the Sullivans, we honor all of our veterans.
BURKHARDT: Jim Miller, himself a veteran of the war in the Pacific, got this whole thing going, a petition that he and Lois Rose, a waitress here at the Heidi (ph) grocery store-restaurant started about a year and a half ago. And though they gathered some 26,000 signatures, putting the Sullivan Brothers on the quarter is far from a done deal.
(on camera): It's not that anybody necessarily has anything against the Sullivan Brothers. It's just whether or not that is the image that Iowans want jangling around in everybody's pocket, how to project your state to the world. Such questions are taken seriously.
BETH FREEMAN, IOWA QUARTER COMMITTEE: A lot of Iowans don't know who the five Sullivan Brothers are. When you think of Iowa, you don't think of five guys in the Navy; you think of agriculture, you think of rolling hills, you think of those Missouri or Mississippi Rivers maybe, but you don't really think of people going into the military service.
BURKHARDT (voice-over): In Waterloo, where you have the Five Sullivans Convention Center, Sullivan Park, a marker where the Sullivan house once stood, another memorial at St. Mary's School, which the boys attended, and other miscellaneous reminders of the Sullivan sacrifice, most here seem to favor yet another memorial, the quarter. Others like Wayne Billman think enough is enough.
WAYNE BILLMAN: They served their country. I did, too. So did my whole family. I got a son in there yet. And, no, they're not, to me -- I wouldn't buy one of the quarters if they put them on there. You couldn't give it -- no, I wouldn't. They couldn't give it to me.
BURKHARDT: A symbol of all Iowans and their notion of service and sacrifice, or the over-mythologizing of a few working class Irish Catholic boys from Waterloo. It's a decision that the state quarter commission will have to make by late August, and the ending might not be as simple as it is in the movies.
Bruce Burkhardt, CNN, Waterloo, Iowa.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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