Modern memorials stand for the
warriors, not the war
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By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
Posted 5/25/2005 9:56 PM
Updated 5/27/2005 10:36 PM
Grass-roots memorials to the
war dead in Iraq and
Afghanistan are spreading
across America, and the
driving force behind them is
often the same: to
commemorate the individuals,
rather than the wars.
 "It's more about glorifying
the everyman in ways that we
haven't seen before," says
Gary Laderman, an Emory
University professor of
religion and author of Rest
in Peace, a history of
20th-century funeral
rituals. "People are really
comfortable about
highlighting the individual.
That's become almost a
sacred kind of act."
SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
Take a closer look at the
Arlington West memorial and
listen to founder Stephen
Sherrill by clicking here.
It's why retired teacher Ed
Hardy, at the behest of no
one, tied yellow ribbons
with the names of slain
service members around the
trunks of pine trees in
Duxbury, Mass. Or why, 14
miles away at a Little
League field in Whitman,
Mass., electrician Chris
Johnson built a memorial of
baseballs to those fighting
in Iraq, one for every
service member killed.
It's revealed in the shared
hope of a company of Marines
based near Fallujah: to see
permanent memorials honoring
their fallen comrades, so
that no one ever forgets.
And it explains why a
California lawyer bid
$17,000 for a tattered
battle flag at a benefit
auction and then handed it
to the mother of a man who
might have been at war had
he not died in training. "I
was going to spend whatever
it took," Rex Parris says.
As Memorial Day 2005
approaches, and as the
number of casualties
overseas continues to swell,
those on the home front
aren't waiting for
government-sanctioned
granite to honor sacrifice.
They're crafting their own
memorials or spending their
own money to remember the
fallen by name. To them,
each loss is personal, every
life sacrosanct.
"Part of it is a protest
against the anonymity of
mass death, " says Edward
Linenthal, a professor of
religion and American
culture at the University of
Wisconsin Oshkosh who wrote
The Unfinished Bombing:
Oklahoma City in American
Memory. "We are not going to
let these people remain
statistics."
Whether placing crosses on a
beach in California or
planting trees on an Army
post in Georgia, those
creating tributes reflect
common traits: an
overwhelming urge to act, a
shared desire to honor
sacrifice, and a commitment
that no death go
unrecognized.
"They're not being
forgotten. That's the plain
and that's the simple," says
Johnson, 39, head of the
baseball league in Whitman.
His memorial currently has
1,280 baseballs. With the
help of friends, Whitman
says, he will erect a new
display case to keep up with
the number of service
members who have died in the
Iraq war. On Wednesday, that
number stood at 1,642.
"It's out of my hands," he
says. "It has to keep
going."
Ribbons of remembrance
Hardy, 67, says he felt
powerless as he followed
news from Iraq.
"All this is going on over
there, you have no way to
connect with it, no way to
express or feel the emotion
inside you," he says,
recalling what triggered his
ribbon memorial along a
wooded pathway near Round
Pond in Duxbury last summer.
"There's a need to try to
physically and mentally
act."
The path was a quiet place
on public land that Hardy
found serene. He asked no
one's permission to tie the
ribbons and told no one
outside his family. "I
wanted to remain anonymous,"
Hardy says. "I would just do
five or 10 names every
night, and that was like
healing. It was a place to
connect with those people
who lost their lives."
But as the memorial was
discovered and word spread,
Duxbury officials said
permission had not been
obtained and ordered it
removed two months after
Hardy created it. "You just
can't do stuff like that on
town property without proper
controls," Duxbury Selectman
Andre Martecchini says.
The local American Legion
chapter supported the
memorial. Newspapers
criticized the decision to
remove it. Supporters and
opponents of the war both
defended Hardy's ribbons.
"That told me that what I
did was the right thing," he
says.
More deaths in May
May could prove one of the
deadliest months this year
for U.S. troops in Iraq: 60
had been killed as of
Wednesday. That already
exceeds the 35 who died in
March and 52 in April. There
were 105 deaths in January,
when a helicopter crash in
Iraq killed 30 Marines and a
sailor.
But unlike January, almost
all the casualties this
month were from combat, and
many of them came during
U.S. offensives against
insurgent strongholds. The
deadliest month of the war
was last November, when 137
U.S. troops died.
'Buy that for the parents'
Rex Parris knew what to do
the moment his wife leaned
over and whispered in his
ear.
They were attending an
awards dinner honoring Boy
Scouts and local Iraq war
veterans at a convention
center in Lancaster, Calif.,
on April 21. The evening's
special guests were Gary and
Julie Wotasik, whose son
Justin, a former Eagle
Scout, died in September
1998 while training as an
Air Force pararescue jumper.
The evening's climactic
event was the auction of a
U.S. battle flag that had
flown over the embattled
Iraqi city of Fallujah.
Proceeds would go to the Boy
Scouts. As bidding began,
Carroll Parris leaned over
to her husband.
"She just whispered in my
ear, 'You should buy that
for the parents,' " the
civil attorney recalls.
He and a local physician
were the only ones still
bidding at $10,000. Parris'
final bid — $17,000 —
transfixed the room, he
recalls. "You're not
thinking at that point, and
there's a lot of
adrenaline."
The lawyer gathered the flag
in its wooden case and
immediately handed it to
Julie Wotasik as tears
flowed and the room
resonated with applause.
Parris said his decision to
purchase the flag was his
way of honoring soldiers
killed in Iraq, and
celebrating the life of a
man who was preparing to
serve his country in war. "I
knew it was the right thing
to do," he says.
Rifle, boots and helmet
Two years ago, Maryland
bronze dealer Richard Rist
began receiving phone calls
from families asking about
statues to pay tribute to
veterans. In response, he
designed and marketed a
bronze depiction of an
iconic battlefield image: a
rifle propped barrel-down
into combat boots, topped
with a helmet.
He charges $3,700 a statue
for families of slain
servicemembers — barely
above cost, Rist says — to
keep the memorials as
affordable as possible.
Seven have been sold in the
past two months. He says at
least 50 other families or
groups have told him they're
raising money to buy them.
"They want something that's
going to be permanent," Rist
says.
Among them are Jeff and
Debbie Hower of Altamont,
Mo. Army Staff Sgt. Clinton
Wisdom, 39, the husband of
Debbie Hower's sister,
Janet, died in Iraq last
year. "You can already tell
that for some people, (the
death) is already fading
away," says Debbie, 49, a
respiratory therapist. "For
us, it's just too real. And
I don't want them to forget
about him. I want his
children and his
grandchildren and the
community to know he was a
hero."
Wisdom, a father of one and
stepfather of two, was with
a detachment of the Kansas
National Guard assigned to
escort convoys along a
dangerous stretch of highway
to Baghdad International
Airport. On Nov. 8, a
suicide car bomber raced
toward a convoy he was
escorting. Chief U.S.
weapons inspector Charles
Duelfer was in the convoy.
Wisdom and Spc. Don Clary,
21, drove their armored
Chevy Suburban into the
bomber's path. The explosion
killed both soldiers. Both
have since received
posthumous promotions:
Wisdom to sergeant 1st class
and Clary to sergeant.
The Howers, with help from
members of the Kansas
National Guard, are working
to place two of Rist's
bronze war memorials at each
of three Kansas Guard
armories: in Horton, in
Clary's hometown of Troy and
in Wisdom's hometown of
Atchison.
Jeff Hower, 52, a chemical
company engineer, says
raising money to buy the
memorials will be "a huge,
huge undertaking." He hopes
a series of benefits — from
skeet shooting, fishing and
golf to volleyball and
motorcycle riding — will
bring in the money. "We
don't want a memorial to
wind up in Washington,
D.C.," Debbie Hower says.
"We want them in hometowns."
'Arlington West'
Karen Meredith drives five
hours from her home in
Mountain View, Calif., to
reach a memorial dedicated
to her son and every other
U.S. military death in Iraq.
It's located on the beach
off Stearns Wharf in Santa
Barbara.
Every Sunday at 7:30 a.m.,
weather permitting, several
members of Veterans for
Peace, led by retired
mailman and former sailor
Lane Anderson, 57, begin
assembling rows of wooden
crosses in the sand, one for
each death. They take them
down by evening.
Begun in November 2003 and
called "Arlington West," the
memorial now covers a space
the size of a football
field. Other Veterans for
Peace chapters across the
country have begun similar
displays
Last Sunday, the Santa
Barbara memorial had 1,631
crosses. One carried the
name of Meredith's son, Army
Lt. Ken Ballard, 26, who was
killed by a sniper in Najaf
on Memorial Day 2004. He is
buried in Arlington National
Cemetery outside Washington.
But his mother visits his
cross at Arlington West.
"I just consider it a very
loving memorial," says
Meredith, 51. "It's a place
to go and be. It means a lot
to me to have a place."
'They're so human'
An art exhibit at Arlington
National Cemetery features
row upon row of more than
1,200 renderings of military
men and women killed in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
They are the creative vision
of Annette Polan, an
associate professor of art
at the Corcoran College of
Art + Design in Washington.
Photos in The Washington
Post of troops killed in war
inspired Polan to bring
together more than 200
artists to create "Faces of
the Fallen," an exhibit that
runs through Veterans Day in
November.
"You look at these faces and
they're young. And some are
shy. Some are proud. And
they're so human. And
they're so dead," she says.
"It is an incalculable
loss."
To place limits on the
project, Polan authorized
portraits only of those
killed in Iraq and
Afghanistan prior to
Veterans Day 2004 — still an
ambitious 1,327 likenesses.
Artists volunteered their
time to create images in
various media, from oil,
acrylic and watercolor to
pencil, wood carving and
montage.
The Defense Department
offered families of the
fallen the chance not to
have their loved one
included in the exhibit.
None declined, Polan says,
and the families will
receive the original
renderings as gifts when the
exhibit ends.
"It is such a manifestation
of American generosity at
all levels," says Polan, who
was stunned by the responses
of the families and the
artists. "I haven't talked
to a single artist who
wasn't affected by this
project, no matter what
media, no matter what style,
no matter what their
position on the war."
Donations accepted
Contributions for memorials
for Clinton Wisdom and Don
Clary, soldiers killed in
action in Baghdad on Nov. 8,
can be sent to the
Wisdom-Clary Memorial Fund,
Exchange National Bank, P.O.
Box 189, Atchison, KS 66002
Blossoming memories
Rather than putting up
portraits or crosses, the
Army is planting a tree at
Fort Stewart, Ga., for every
death suffered by the 3rd
Infantry Division, which is
based there. The division
was the first to reach
Baghdad in 2003, early in
the war, and it returned to
Iraq this year.
Eastern redbud trees were
chosen because they produce
pink-purple blossoms in the
spring — the season when the
division's GIs began
fighting and dying in Iraq,
says Rich Olson, a spokesman
for Fort Stewart. Currently,
84 trees line an area called
Warrior's Walk.
"The last time I was there,
I just couldn't believe how
long the path had gotten,"
says Gary Holloway, chairman
of a Maryland-based company
that manages family housing
on 18 military bases,
including Fort Stewart.
His firm anonymously
financed the project in 2003
and recently made its role
public. "When you think
about these soldiers,"
Holloway says, "it's really
pretty minimal what we're
doing in return."
Army historian William Epley
says honoring individual
soldiers with separate
memorials is a slight
departure from a military
tradition that calls for
remembering a unit as a
whole. "It was a new idea,"
Olson says. "It seems
appropriate."
'If I were to fall'
At a base near Fallujah,
Lima Company Marines of the
3rd Battalion, 4th Marine
Regiment dream of seeing a
memorial in the hometown of
every American service
member lost in the war.
Between patrols into the
city, Lance Cpl. John
Romero, 25, and Lance Cpl.
Gilberto Burbante Jr., 22,
have led the discussion,
tinkering even with details
of the design: perhaps
something in black granite,
with a folded American flag
encased in glass and special
lighting. And a simple
adage: All gave some and
some gave all.
"I have lost a lot of good
friends. So in their honor,
I will see this memorial
erected," Romero wrote in an
e-mail from Iraq.
He laid out his dream in a
letter this month in his
hometown paper, The Santa Fe
New Mexican. Part of his
plea: "It would bring me
comfort knowing that, if I
were to fall, my name would
last through the ages for
all to see."
Click here for original
article in USA Today.
Click here to view the
Fallen Soldier Memorial. |
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