What Is the Right Way to Honor Ike? In "I Like Ike (and His Memorial) " (Op-Ed, March 23), Witold Rybczynski chose to single out just two members of the Eisenhower family as the only ones who "proclaimed" dissatisfaction with Frank Gehry's design. Perhaps Mr. Rybczynski did not read our family's letter to the United States Commission of Fine Arts, of which he is a member. We included a letter from our father, John S. D. Eisenhower, the sole heir and executor of Dwight D. Eisenhower's will, requesting a simple stone memorial and encouraging my sister Susan and me, President Eisenhower's granddaughters, to pursue this. And perhaps Mr. Rybczynski missed the statement from our brother, David, included in Susan's written Congressional testimony on March 20, making it clear that he did not vote to select Gehry Partners while serving on the selection jury and that he also supports our efforts, including a redesign. Both statements are at www.susaneisenhower.com. Some believe that the family is not united. We have made our views and concerns known to the commission and its staff many times over a long period of time, including the years before the selection of Gehry Partners to design the memorial. Witold Rybczynski misses the essence of the objections to the proposed design for a memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower in Washington: it highlights Eisenhower's youth in Kansas far more than his military or political achievements. Years before he was elected president, Eisenhower entered history as Supreme Allied Commander for the European theater in World War II. For Holocaust survivors and their families in particular, he holds an iconic place in our hearts for his leadership of the multinational troops who liberated the Nazi death and concentration camps in 1945. Mr. Rybczynski is wrong when he writes that "compromise and consensus ... are a poor recipe for creating a memorial." On the contrary, the planned memorial to Eisenhower must take into account the perspectives and concerns of those Americans whose lives he touched and influenced most directly. As the son of survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, I agree with Susan and Anne Eisenhower that their grandfather should be depicted above all as the general who rescued Europe and the world from the scourge of Nazism. The writer is vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. Witold Rybczynski raises a legitimate concern that seeking compromise and consensus on Frank Gehry's Eisenhower Memorial could "ultimately weaken the memorial design." But in dismissing memorial critics, he doesn't seriously consider a crucial point. This design ignores and indeed eclipses an existing revered work of art: the L'Enfant plan for the city of Washington. In the 1791 plan, Maryland Avenue was envisioned to be the mirror image of Pennsylvania Avenue north of the Mall. Pennsylvania Avenue was cleaned up starting only in the 1970s. It took the visionary Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to cut through the red tape and entrenched interests to make that happen. The Eisenhower Memorial site on Maryland Avenue is a wonderful opportunity to follow that lead and create a new work of public art that contributes to the historic plan, not turns its back on it. JUDY SCOTT FELDMAN Chairwoman, National Coalition to Save Our Mall Rockville, Md., March 24, 2012 I strongly support Witold Rybczynski's perspective on the design of the proposed Eisenhower memorial. As a sometime Iowa farm boy, I particularly take issue with the reported view of some that featuring Ike's characterization of himself as a "Kansas farm boy" is "an affront to a man who was a victorious five-star general as well as a successful two-term president." That seems to me to be a view of hoity-toity members of a self-appointed American aristocracy. They forget that our history has many prominent figures from the middle of the country - for example, Abraham Lincoln and Harry S. Truman.