Winston Churchill Memorial and Library

In 1946, Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, invited Winston Churchill to speak at the college. Speak he did. Instead of delivering the brief inspirational talk the college was expecting, Churchill used the forum to deliver a major foreign policy statement, the Iron Curtain Speech: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. . ."

Thus began the Cold War, which lasted another 40 years.

The Memorial was founded in 1969 to honor the life and legacy of one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century. It is housed within the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, a 12th century church from the middle of London, redesigned by Sir Christopher Wren in 1677, that was relocated to Fulton. The undercroft of this beautiful and historic Wren church is a museum filled with a priceless treasury of artifacts and information relating to the life and times of Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill himself was intrigued by the imaginative idea of a restored Wren church in America's heartland. He wrote, "It may symbolize in the eyes of the English-speaking peoples the ideals of Anglo-American association on which rest, now as before, so many of our hopes for peace and the future of mankind."
-- From http://www.westminster-mo.edu/cm/index.asp.

In addition to many artifacts of Churchill's life, the center displays a section of the Berlin Wall, the physical manifestation of the Iron Curtain.

Winston Churchill and his legacy have been very much a part of my life from age 9 to 60 or so. He was constantly in the news during World War II, of course. Then in 1954 I served in England for a time, and actually photographed Sir Winston coming out of 10 Downing Street, just a few days before his retirement (I can't find the photo; sorry). And the Cold War was very much a part of everyone's life during the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush. So when I was in Missouri recently (2002), I visited his Memorial in Fulton.

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All photos on this site ©Donald L. Mark 1973-2007

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