Thanks to the revocation of an executive order by President Joe Biden, Steve Jobs will no longer be commemorated with his own statue as part of a National Garden of American Heroes. While not intended as a diss against the late Apple CEO and co-founder, Biden has done away with the proposed garden plan signed by his predecessor, Donald Trump, days before Trump left office.
Trump had described the proposed garden as “America’s answer to [the] reckless attempt to erase our heroes, values, and entire way of life.” Although he only signed the executive order on January 18, Trump had first announced the garden in summer 2020. No site had been announced for where it would be located—and, apparently, no site now ever will.
No More Garden
Jobs wasn’t the only person set to be memorialized in the garden. It would also have included statues of aviation pioneers the Wright Brothers, inventors Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, lawyer and associate justice of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsberg, basketball player Kobe Bryant, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, and others.
“The National Garden will be built to reflect the awesome splendor of our country’s timeless exceptionalism,” Trump’s executive order stated. “It will be a place where citizens, young and old, can renew their vision of greatness and take up the challenge that I gave every American in my first address to Congress.”
Politico said that cancelling the proposed garden was one of several executive orders President Biden revoked on Friday, May 14. The publication notes that:
“It was virtually assured that Biden would not move forward with the project, which was put forward in large part as a counter to last summer’s racial justice protests and the debate surrounding the removal of monuments to Confederate icons.”
Another tech-related (or tech-adjacent, in the case of the Steve Jobs statue) executive order that Biden has cancelled involved one that targeted social media companies, which Trump had said discriminated against conservative speech on the internet.
Steve Jobs Probably Wouldn’t Have Cared
As a fiercely unsentimental individual, Steve Jobs probably wouldn’t have cared a jot about having a statue erected in his honor. Before Apple’s “Apple Park” headquarters received its name, Stephen Fry recalled, in a Financial Review article, suggesting to Apple CEO Tim Cook that they call it the Steve Jobs Campus. “Oh, Steve made his views on that very clear,” Cook responded.
In the end, Apple decided to pay homage to Steve through the naming of the on-site Steve Jobs Theater where new products have, in non-pandemic times, been introduced. That’s probably the most fitting tribute of all.
Image Credit: Matthew Yohe/Wikipedia CC
