America's National Churchill Museum National Historic Landmark Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, on March 5, 1946, President Harry S. Truman of Missouri invited a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, to Fulton, MO, Westminster College, to deliver a speech.

The two men actually traveled to the speech together over land by train, and it was really a remarkable occasion. By this time, of course, Churchill was in retirement--or a brief retirement; he was to return to public office some short time thereafter. And Churchill might have chosen, at that speech in Fulton at Westminster College, to talk about any number of things. He might have talked about his legacy, as many people do in Washington, DC, these days. He might have told stories about the recently won Second World War. But, instead, he gave one of the most significant speeches of the 20th century, a speech that defined with moral clarity unparalleled the challenges of the second half of the 20th century. He called it the ``Sinews of Peace'' speech, but it came to be known ever after as ``The Iron Curtain'' speech.

It was in Fulton, MO, that Churchill so famously said that an iron curtain has descended across the European continent, and he went on to say that the struggle against Soviet communism would be the great moral challenge--and, of course, the national security challenge--the great cause of free peoples everywhere in the second half of the 20th century.

He was absolutely correct. And that speech set the tone; it set the agenda; it set the moral framework for the decades that followed, culminating, of course, with President Reagan's own victory over Soviet communism in which he led this country to triumph and the fall of the Berlin Wall, which would come over four decades after Churchill visited Fulton.

Now, interestingly, when Churchill came to Fulton that day and to Westminster College, they didn't have a space big enough for him, other than the Westminster College gymnasium. So Churchill gave his speech in the gym there at Westminster College.

In the years that followed, as the speech became progressively more famous, as Churchill's prophetic insight became more and more recognized, the residents of Fulton decided that it would be fitting to create a memorial there on the college campus at Westminster College to commemorate that speech. And so they settled upon something interesting. In 1966, 20 years after the speech had first been delivered, the residents of Fulton transported from London the bricks of a church, a parish church in London called St. Mary Aldermanbury that had been destroyed in the Blitz of 1940 when Churchill was Prime Minister, when England stood alone against the Nazi scourge. The residents of Fulton transported those bricks from that church that had been destroyed to Fulton, MO, to the Westminster campus, and they rebuilt the church right there on the campus of Westminster.

Here it is now, as it stands today. And there is a statue of Churchill right next to it.

The thing about this church is it was first built in the 11th century. The first mention we have of it is in 1181 when it was a parish church in the city of London. It was actually destroyed once before in the Great Fire of London in 1666, and then it was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren before it was gutted again by the Blitz in 1940.

So here it stands today in Fulton, MO, on the campus of Westminster College, a monument to Winston Churchill, yes, but also a monument to the great bonds between the United States and the United Kingdom, to our shared struggle to free the world of tyranny in the 20th century and to our shared victories together across that great century.

And today, Mr. President, I am here on this floor to ask consent to pass legislation to designate this memorial as a national historic landmark to make sure that, from now on, the America's National Churchill Museum, as it is called in Fulton, will stand recognized by this country as a national historic landmark and that the National Park Service will continue to help maintain it and to study future potential designations for the site.

So we are going to pause, I understand, for one moment, and then I will ask permission to pass the bill.

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