The Tribune News Service reports that “in 2006, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, was at a dinner at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth when she found herself eavesdropping on a conversation about the rescue of art during World War II.”  

“’I was astounded,’ she told McClatchy in an interview, because she had never heard of the effort. ‘I’ve always had a special interest in World War II.’”  

“The speaker was Robert Edsel, a self-taught art historian from Dallas who had just self-published a book, ‘Rescuing Da Vinci,’ about the Allied effort to preserve and protect art and cultural treasures during the war.”  

“On Thursday Granger spoke in the U.S. Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, as did Edsel and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; and the leadership of the House and Senate as the U.S. honored the ‘Monuments Men,’ the little-known band of art curators, scholars and architects with the Congressional Gold Medal.”