Who Is Caring For Closed Memorials? No One! Man Tries And Is Asked To Leave.

Man Mowing Grass At Lincoln Memorial Reminds Us That America Is Elbow Grease, Not Bureaucracy And Handouts… Feds Tell Him To Get Lost

October 9, 2013 by Sam Rolley 

Early Wednesday an unidentified man took his lawnmower and a few tools to the Lincoln Memorial to provide free groundskeeping work to the closed Federal monument. Multiple Park Police officers promptly asked him to leave.

Via Twitter:

The Weekly Standard reports:

It’s unclear how much of the expansive lawn behind the memorial was mowed, but Park Police were alerted and three cruisers with multiple officers showed up.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD watched the officers observing the mystery mower from a distance, as he appeared to be packing it up for the day, carefully placing his blue South Carolina flag in a tube attached to his tool-toting dolly.

According to Park Police public information officer Sergeant Paul Brooks, there was no arrest made. “He was asked to leave, and he complied,” said Brooks.

The lawnmower-wielding patriot was later identified as South Carolina native Chris Cox, who said that he decided to clean up the National Mall not for political reasons, but out of respect for veterans preparing to descend on the Nation’s capital for this weekend’s Million Vet March.

“These are our memorials. Do they think that we’re just going to let them go to hell? No,” Cox told All-News 99.1 reporter John Domen. “If they shut down our memorials, we’re still going to take the trash out, we’re going to clean the windows, we’re going to cut the grass, we’re going to pull the weeds, we’re going to do the tree work.”

Armed with a push mower and a chainsaw, Cox set about clearing a branch which had fallen onto a path near the reflecting pool and mowing the lawn around the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday. He said that he hoped more volunteers would join in what he dubbed the Memorial Militia.

Park Police reportedly initially left the bastion of citizenship alone– but he was later asked to stop providing the Federal government with free landscaping services for “liability reasons.”

He said, however, that he will do the best he can to clean up the area between the Lincoln and World War II memorials before veterans arrive Sunday.

Representative Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), upon learning of Cox’s endeavor, said Cox should be honored for his effort.

“Chris embodies what it means to be not just a South Carolinian, but an American,” said Sanford. “He saw a job that wasn’t getting done and decided to take care of it.”

Below is a video of Cox being interviewed:

While the man’s mowing is a small gesture, do you think more acts of similar civil disobedience by Americans throughout the Nation could send a powerful message to the Federal government?