In an Executive Order released today, it was revealed that Walt Disney was one of the names included for the National Garden of American Heroes. Other people that are to be included in this garden of statues includes John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Kobe Bryant, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Alexander Hamilton, Steve Jobs, Betsy Ross, Sacagawea, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alex Trebek, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, and the Wright brothers to name a few.
The Executive Order says that “each individual has been chosen for embodying the American spirit of daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love. Astounding the world by the sheer power of their example, each one of them has contributed indispensably to America’s noble history, the best chapters of which are still to come.”
People included in this statuary garden are all considered as a “historically significant American.” According to the Executive Order, this includes individuals “who made substantive contributions to America’s public life or otherwise had a substantive effect on America’s history.”
Some notable names for Disney fans also include Davy Crocket, Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman, and Abraham Lincoln.
It should be noted that this is an Executive Order and not a law passed by Congress and then signed by the President of the United States. In general, future administrations can change or eliminate Executive Orders created by preceding administrations.
The full list of people included for the National Garden of American Hereos includes:
- Ansel Adams
- John Adams
- Samuel Adams
- Muhammad Ali
- Luis Walter Alvarez
- Susan B. Anthony
- Hannah Arendt
- Louis Armstrong
- Neil Armstrong
- Crispus Attucks
- John James Audubon
- Lauren Bacall
- Clara Barton
- Todd Beamer
- Alexander Graham Bell
- Roy Benavidez
- Ingrid Bergman
- Irving Berlin
- Humphrey Bogart
- Daniel Boone
- Norman Borlaug
- William Bradford
- Herb Brooks
- Kobe Bryant
- William F. Buckley, Jr.
- Sitting Bull
- Frank Capra
- Andrew Carnegie
- Charles Carroll
- John Carroll
- George Washington Carver
- Johnny Cash
- Joshua Chamberlain
- Whittaker Chambers
- Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman
- Ray Charles
- Julia Child
- Gordon Chung-Hoon
- William Clark
- Henry Clay
- Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
- Roberto Clemente
- Grover Cleveland
- Red Cloud
- William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody
- Nat King Cole
- Samuel Colt
- Christopher Columbus
- Calvin Coolidge
- James Fenimore Cooper
- Davy Crockett
- Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.
- Miles Davis
- Dorothy Day
- Joseph H. De Castro
- Emily Dickinson
- Walt Disney
- William “Wild Bill” Donovan
- Jimmy Doolittle
- Desmond Doss
- Frederick Douglass
- Herbert Henry Dow
- Katharine Drexel
- Peter Drucker
- Amelia Earhart
- Thomas Edison
- Jonathan Edwards
- Albert Einstein
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Duke Ellington
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Medgar Evers
- David Farragut
- the Marquis de La Fayette
- Mary Fields
- Henry Ford
- George Fox
- Aretha Franklin
- Benjamin Franklin
- Milton Friedman
- Robert Frost
- Gabby Gabreski
- Bernardo de Gálvez
- Lou Gehrig
- Theodor Seuss Geisel
- Cass Gilbert
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- John Glenn
- Barry Goldwater
- Samuel Gompers
- Alexander Goode
- Carl Gorman
- Billy Graham
- Ulysses S. Grant
- Nellie Gray
- Nathanael Greene
- Woody Guthrie
- Nathan Hale
- William Frederick “Bull” Halsey, Jr.
- Alexander Hamilton
- Ira Hayes
- Hans Christian Heg
- Ernest Hemingway
- Patrick Henry
- Charlton Heston
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Billie Holiday
- Bob Hope
- Johns Hopkins
- Grace Hopper
- Sam Houston
- Whitney Houston
- Julia Ward Howe
- Edwin Hubble
- Daniel Inouye
- Andrew Jackson
- Robert H. Jackson
- Mary Jackson
- John Jay
- Thomas Jefferson
- Steve Jobs
- Katherine Johnson
- Barbara Jordan
- Chief Joseph
- Elia Kazan
- Helen Keller
- John F. Kennedy
- Francis Scott Key
- Coretta Scott King
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Russell Kirk
- Jeane Kirkpatrick
- Henry Knox
- Tadeusz Kościuszko
- Harper Lee
- Pierre Charles L’Enfant
- Meriwether Lewis
- Abraham Lincoln
- Vince Lombardi
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Clare Boothe Luce
- Douglas MacArthur
- Dolley Madison
- James Madison
- George Marshall
- Thurgood Marshall
- William Mayo
- Christa McAuliffe
- William McKinley
- Louise McManus
- Herman Melville
- Thomas Merton
- George P. Mitchell
- Maria Mitchell
- William “Billy” Mitchell
- Samuel Morse
- Lucretia Mott
- John Muir
- Audie Murphy
- Edward Murrow
- John Neumann
- Annie Oakley
- Jesse Owens
- Rosa Parks
- George S. Patton, Jr.
- Charles Willson Peale
- William Penn
- Oliver Hazard Perry
- John J. Pershing
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Clark Poling
- John Russell Pope
- Elvis Presley
- Jeannette Rankin
- Ronald Reagan
- Walter Reed
- William Rehnquist
- Paul Revere
- Henry Hobson Richardson
- Hyman Rickover
- Sally Ride
- Matthew Ridgway
- Jackie Robinson
- Norman Rockwell
- Caesar Rodney
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Theodore Roosevelt
- Betsy Ross
- Babe Ruth
- Sacagawea
- Jonas Salk
- John Singer Sargent
- Antonin Scalia
- Norman Schwarzkopf
- Junípero Serra
- Elizabeth Ann Seton
- Robert Gould Shaw
- Fulton Sheen
- Alan Shepard
- Frank Sinatra
- Margaret Chase Smith
- Bessie Smith
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- Jimmy Stewart
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Gilbert Stuart
- Anne Sullivan
- William Howard Taft
- Maria Tallchief
- Maxwell Taylor
- Tecumseh
- Kateri Tekakwitha
- Shirley Temple
- Nikola Tesla
- Jefferson Thomas
- Henry David Thoreau
- Jim Thorpe
- Augustus Tolton
- Alex Trebek
- Harry S. Truman
- Sojourner Truth
- Harriet Tubman
- Dorothy Vaughan
- C. T. Vivian
- John von Neumann
- Thomas Ustick Walter
- Sam Walton
- Booker T. Washington
- George Washington
- John Washington
- John Wayne
- Ida B. Wells-Barnett
- Phillis Wheatley
- Walt Whitman
- Laura Ingalls Wilder
- Roger Williams
- John Winthrop
- Frank Lloyd Wright
- Orville Wright
- Wilbur Wright
- Alvin C. York
- Cy Young,
- Lorenzo de Zavala
