The Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4999 in Chillicothe broke ground this year for an elaborate memorial to be completed next year. Those involved with the more than $300,000 project say it’s for soldiers, families and the community. And, like many memorials, this one preserves the memory of those who paid the ultimate price.
On a small patch of grass in the middle of a residential neighborhood, a crowd of several hundred veterans, families, neighbors and school children are gathered around the base of the memorial. It’s not set to be complete until spring. For now, it’s just a star-shaped slab of concrete foundation. But the crowd’s stillness makes the unfinished construction site feel sacred.
David Augsberger is playing his trumpet at the Veteran’s Day dedication ceremony. He’s an army Veteran.
“I served in Vietnam in 1969 with 18th engineers, and I lost my arm about three months after I was in Vietnam, in an accident,” Augsburger said.
Augsburger is a life-member of the VFW post, and several other national veterans groups.
“And I hate to say this, but I’m 67, and I’m one of the younger ones," Augsburger said. "So you know we’re not going to be around that much longer.”
That’s been a growing problem. Veterans organizations across the country are seeing declines in membership, where recent Veterans were expected to fill the gap. It’s a shame, Augsburger says, because the camaraderie the groups provide could help younger veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan cope with PTSD and depression.
“What helped me was after I lost my arm in Vietnam, I had people I could talk to that understood what I was going through,” Augsburger said.
That’s one of the reasons why the Chillicothe Veterans group wanted to build a memorial.
“You know if you’ve been to a war, and you’ve come home, people don’t know what you’ve been through. They don’t know. But another veteran does,” said project chairman and Vietnam War Army veteran Tom Harms.
“My wife, where she works, there was a guy there who never would talk about it. He was in Vietnam and he wouldn't talk or say anything about the war," Harms said. "I went in there and shook hands with him and we just talked for about an hour. And those people were amazed that he talked. But it was veteran-to-veteran.”
The monument is like an extension of the V-F-W, outside of the building. The design includes five granite benches representing separate services of the U.S. armed forces. The idea for a bench was strategic, Harms says. They invite conversation, so future generations will hear and preserve veterans’ stories.
The project is on the shoulders of two artists:
“I mean it’s just like writing a history book. You have to dot your i’s and cross your t’s,” sculptor Jaci Willis said.
Willis and Fisher Stolz are crafting two life-size soldiers out of clay. One is a heavily armed modern-day U.S. Navy Seal, and the other is a gaunt, weary-eyed Revolutionary war soldier.
"Being able to recreate the folds in the soldier's uniform, trying to get that facial expression just right, that's really what we love to do," Stolz said.
Willis and Stolz poured over history textbooks, researching subtleties like -- how a revolutionary war soldier salutes. But more than for accuracy’s sake, they hope the life-size statues bring an emotional quality to the monument.
“There's something that's easy for them to relate to, as life-size figures are," Stolz said.
And as most monuments do, the one in Chillicothe will serve to commemorate the ones who didn’t make it home.
“When I got to Vietnam, I made a certain amount of friends and one by one, they went home injured, or they went home, or they were killed,” said retired Marine James Pesch.
“I remember the day that Bob got killed. That’s a part of me that’s in this,” Pesch said.
Pesch designed the Chillicothe Veteran’s Memorial earlier this year. He sketched the design on a napkin when he was having lunch with a few of his VFW friends.
“Yeah I drew it out on a napkin, but it’s something I probably had welled up inside of me for a long time,” Pesch said. "These are names I haven’t spoken in years...that’s why we need a place like this. It’s a catharsis.
For soldiers young, old, and the ones who’ve departed, he says, there’s a place for them in Chillicothe.