CLEVELAND -- The Interior Department says it will be much easier to explain to tourists why the wrong date for Ohio statehood is set in stone at the Lincoln Memorial than to do some corrective carving.
Starting next summer, the department will issue a revised pamphlet that will tell why the marble of the popular Washington, D.C., monument lists 1802 rather than 1803 as the date Ohio joined the Union.
Changing the inscription would be too expansive and probably harm the appearance of the memorial, department officials said in a letter to Rep. Ronald Mottl, D-Ohio.
The plan apparently is enough to satisfy Stephen Kunath, the suburban Parma man who raised a ruckus about the whole thing more than a year ago.
'I think the brochure proposal is about as good as I could expect,' said Kunath, an Ohio Bell Telephone Co. account executive. 'Given the historical importance of the building and the difficulty of altering the numerals.'
