Eisenhower Memorial Commission

BRIG. GEN. CARL W. REDDEL, USAF (RET.)
Executive Director
General Reddel began work with the Eisenhower Memorial Commission in 2001, while he was Public Service Fellow in the Center for Public Service at Gettysburg College. During 1999-2000, he was President and CEO of the Eisenhower World Affairs Institute in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the Institute, he was Professor and Head of the Department of History at the United States Air Force Academy.
After joining the Commission in 2001, General Reddel organized the Commission's administration and staffing in cooperation with the Agency Liaison Division of the General Services Administration. He proposed and managed the ten-member Legacy Committee under the Chairmanship of Professor Louis Galambos, Johns Hopkins University, to survey and study the Eisenhower legacy.

During the Legacy Study, completed in 2003, the Commission undertook a review of twenty-six alternative sites for the Eisenhower Memorial. While conducting the review, completed in 2005 with the assistance of the architectural firm, Gensler, the Commission moved to its current location and established its website.

After the Commission chose a memorial site in 2005, General Reddel oversaw securing Congressional approval in 2006 for Area I location and negotiated the appointment of an Executive Architect to manage the pre-design process. The Pre-Design Program to secure a designer for the Eisenhower Memorial was completed in 2007, leading to the selection of Frank Gehry as the memorial designer in 2009. The Commission is now working with Local Projects, a New York City award-winning design firm, on President Eisenhower’s electronic memorialization, the “E-Memorial”.

A specialist in Russian studies, Gen. Reddel directed a department of thirty-five faculty members at the United States Air Force Academy, offering one of the largest and most diverse undergraduate programs in global and military history in the United States. He served as a Team Chief of the On-Site Inspection Agency (OSIA) for the implementation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, leading missile destruction teams in the former Soviet Union, and completed training for inspections under the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE).

He has studied at the Institute for the Study of the U.S.S.R. (Munich) and undertaken research at the U.S. Army Russian Institute (Garmisch) and Moscow State University (Moscow). He was educated at Drake University (B.S.), the Maxwell School at Syracuse University (M.A.) and Indiana University (Ph.D.).

Steve Werner host

Also speaking at Club 31