Burlington Community Fund offers fundraising challenge to residents
By Ed Nadolski
Editor in Chief
As Burlington and the nation look back on Monday’s ceremonies honoring military sacrifice, a local organization has stepped up to help build a lasting memorial to all who’ve served.
Officials with the Burlington Community Fund announced last week the philanthropic organization will offer a $10,000 matching grant to inspire others to donate to the campaign to build a permanent memorial to people from the Burlington area who’ve served in the military, according to Claude Lois, vice president of the Burlington Community Fund.
“This is part of our mission and we want to be out front in supporting the memorial and the veterans,” Lois said.
The memorial, designed by local architect Tom Stelling, will feature four black granite panels with the names of deceased local veterans etched in the stone. The panels will be arranged in a semi-circle on the edge of the current war memorial in Echo Park.
It will stand as a permanent tribute to military service, replacing the bed of wooden crosses that is installed by veterans and local Boy Scouts at this time each year and remains in place for the Memorial Day observance.
According to Stelling, as the number of wooden crosses has grown to about 2,000 and the number of active veterans has dwindled, the ability of the veterans groups to erect, maintain and store the display each year has diminished.
“This is a permanent way of keeping the veterans in the forefront of people’s minds,” Stelling said.
The memorial will honor all local veterans upon their natural deaths. A separate tribute to those who gave their lives in combat is embedded into an exterior wall on Veterans Terrace, which is adjacent to Echo Park.
The campaign to raise the funds for the permanent memorial – spearheaded by local Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2823 – was championed by Burlington Mayor Jeannie Hefty in February. The fund raising campaign got off to a good start, she said, but has waned in recent months.
She said the matching grant from the Burlington Community Fund should help get the campaign moving again.
“I’m thankful for what the Community Fund is doing for this project,” Hefty said. “(The fund has) been involved in so many different things.
“This project means so much to the veterans and so much to me.”
In addition to the VFW, Burlington’s other veterans groups have made what Stelling called “substantial” financial contributions to the project.
Now the community’s help is needed in putting the campaign over the top.
Area residents and organizations can send their donations to Veterans Memorial Wall Fund, P.O. Box 106, Burlington, WI 53105.
Donations from this point forward will be matched up to $10,000 by the Community Fund.
The Burlington Community Fund had its genesis in the desire on the part of concerned local citizens to help renovate and improve the former Veterans Building. The end result was the construction of Veterans Terrace at Echo Park, which remains home to the area’s veterans organizations by hosting meetings and storing equipment without charge, according to Burlington Community Fund Secretary Bobbie Wagner.
The Community Fund is the non-profit philanthropic organization that funnels proceeds generated by the operation of Veterans Terrace back into the community through grants, scholarships and other donations.
Since its inception in 2010 the fund has donated $206,000 in cash to various community groups and an additional $400,000 in in-kind donations – mainly free use of the facility – to community groups and causes, according to Wagner.
This is the second major donation by the Community Fund in the past year. Last fall the organization pledged $100,000 over a period of several years to help establish a maintenance fund for the operation of the new Burlington Community Pool, which will be built beginning next fall.
The author of this story, Ed Nadolski, is a member of the Burlington Community Fund Board of Directors.
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