Page 226 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS ARE TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE AGENTS

One of those compromises was the design and placement of a statue
honoring those who survived the Vietnam War and also the inclusion of a
flagpole. Shull discovered that the one who would have to approve the
statue and flagpole was J. Carter Brown, Director of the U.S. National
Gallery of Art and Chairman of the Fine Arts Commission. Shull had
sat next to Brown during one of the White House Fellows’ educational
luncheons, and the two had enjoyed a nice chat. Shull called Brown to
discuss the statue and the flagpole. By the time the conversation was over,
Brown agreed with Shull that the two items would not detract from the
overall aesthetics of the memorial. Shull asked Brown to put that in writing,
and he did.
A few months later, on a Friday afternoon, as the groundbreaking
was about to occur, Shull received a call from Jack Wheeler, chairman of
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, asking for help in persuading
the Department of Interior, specifically Secretary Watt, to approve the
compromise design. He was the last holdout in the approval process. Shull
called Bill Horn, a Watt deputy, and told him the White House wanted
this done and Watt should approve it. Horn called Watt in Denver, where
he was giving a speech, and obtained the green light. Shull then called Jack
Fish, an area director of the National Park Service, to ask that the permit
for the groundbreaking be issued. On Shull’s promise that all approvals
had been obtained, Fish agreed to do so. Bob Doubek from the Memorial
Fund was waiting inside the Park Service offices to receive the signed per-
mit. Hours later Horn called Shull to inform him that dozens of con-
gressmen at the request of Ross Perot and others opposed to the design had
called Watt to try to stop the permit from being issued.
Shull let Horn know that their only recourse would be to seek a cease
and desist order from a judge that weekend because groundbreaking would
begin on Monday, and it did. “It was a passion of mine to get it done,
and I ended up involved in it until the day it was dedicated by President
Reagan in 1984,” Shull said. “I think the memorial was significant because
it crossed a lot of boundaries. As I think back on my White House
Fellowship, it’s the one thing of which I am most proud.”
Shull stayed on in Washington after his Fellowship concluded, serving
as deputy executive secretary at the National Security Council and also as
military assistant to Robert “Bud” McFarlane (WHF 71–72), President
Reagan’s assistant for national security affairs. In the mid-1980s, Shull

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