Organizers fall just short of having new memorial finished for Monday’s ceremony
By Ed Nadolski
Editor in Chief
Work began Wednesday morning on etching the names of deceased local service men and women into the four granite blocks of Burlington’s new veterans memorial in Echo Lake Park.
However, the goal of having all 3,061 names sand-blasted into the black stone in time for Monday’s Memorial Day ceremony will not be realized, according to organizer Tom Stelling.
Stelling said Thursday that weather conditions and other factors didn’t allow enough time to complete the project prior to the ceremony.
The new display, which is arranged in a semicircle around the existing veterans memorial, will eventually replace the bed of crosses that’s assembled annually in the run-up to the Memorial Day observance.
The completion of the memorial – a tribute to the local men and women who served in the military and returned to serve their communities – was more than a year in the making.
The bed of crosses, which includes more than 1,800 crosses bearing the names of deceased local service men and women, became a burden for local veterans groups to maintain, according to Stelling.
Vietnam veteran and artist Carl Anders came up with the idea of a permanent memorial. Once the idea gained traction among the area’s veterans organizations, Stelling, who is a veteran and local architect, ran with the concept that Anders had sketched out.
Mayor Jeannie Hefty also became a flag-bearer for the project and helped raise funds to pay for the memorial.
The original plan was to install and etch the 6-foot by 6-foot granite blocks by Veterans Day last November, but the process slowed when organizers set about verifying the names that would be etched into the wall.
At the time Stelling said the goal was to make sure all the names included belonged there.
Stelling said the list of names on the crosses in some cases only included first initials or were otherwise incomplete. The goal, he said, was to include full names and ensure all families that those whose names appear on the memorial are there for a legitimate reason.
The veterans enlisted the help of local historian Don Vande Sand, who came up with more than 3,000 names dating back to the Civil War.
“Don painstakingly went through the process of checking all the names,” Stelling said. “He went back to the beginning of Burlington to fill in the blanks.”
To read the complete story see the May 24 edition of the Burlington Standard Press.
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