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People were quick to speak up for Mary when Mary Washington College won university status. But James Monroe had no such luck. Date published: 7/21/2004 By LAURA MOYER For all this summer's uproar over saving the Mary Washington College name, there's been no similar chorus of support for the James Monroe Center for Graduate and Professional Studies. That moniker has vanished quietly into the University of Mary Washington fold, without so much as a whimper of protest. It's not that the fifth president and author of the Monroe Doctrine lacks fans in his native Virginia or elsewhere. It's just that there are more important battles to fight. John Pearce, director of the James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library in Fredericksburg--which operates under the UMW umbrella--said he was delighted when the graduate program was named for Monroe but not brokenhearted when the name petered out. When it comes to honors, Pearce said, the real shame is that there's no James Monroe statue or monument in the nation's capital. The late Felix de Weldon, best known nationally for sculpting the Iwo Jima monument and locally for creating the Richard Kirkland Memorial on Sunken Road, once sketched a Monroe tribute. But the idea never made it off paper, Pearce said. Pearce thinks lots more could be done to boost Monroe's modern-day popularity. A national best seller, for example, might renovate Monroe's image as David McCullough's 2001 biography did for John Adams. Or maybe Ken Burns would like to do a Monroe series for PBS? As a matter of fact, Pearce has asked Burns to do just that. The documentarian politely replied that he had at least five other projects to get to first. Farther afield, Monroe has a cheering squad at Ash Lawn-Highland, his historic home in Albemarle County. It's operated by the College of William & Mary. Executive Director Carolyn Holmes good-naturedly agreed with a reporter's suggestion that with the loss of the graduate school name at UMW, Monroe wuz robbed. "Yeah, I would think it very appropriate that Monroe's name should be used," Holmes said. "The state should be proud to have his name hither and thither." Virginia has universities named for George Washington and James Madison, presidents No. 1 and No. 4. The University of Virginia is pretty much synonymous with president No. 3, Thomas Jefferson, whose name is everywhere in Charlottesville. One huge Virginia university is named for George Mason--an intellectual and a patriot, but never a president. But Monroe?
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