This is an interesting veterans memorial design in that there are no military weapons or statues. Instead there is a litany of names - those who gave everything they had for the rest of us. The names are not in alphabetical order, but chronological. There is an adjacent stand with a notebook inside so people can find a specific name on the huge glass panels. The panels are at varying angles signifying men and women who have fallen in action. The design is also an homage to Colorado's mountains. There is a trough below the panels for water to signify the oceans that separated Colorado from the many foreign battlefields - filled with coins due to our silly habit of throwing coins into pools of water.
"6,000 fallen soldiers honored at the Colorado Freedom Memorial
By Nic Turiciano, The Denver Post Floyd Rivera, Sam Catalano Jr. and Alvis E. Karr.
Their names, along with almost 6,000 other fallen Colorado soldiers, are now immortalized in glass on the Colorado Freedom Memorial in Aurora.
The memorial, the first of its kind honoring all Colorado soldiers killed or missing in action since statehood, was officially dedicated at Springhill Park on Sunday to a crowd of veterans young and old and their families.
"We did it," Rick Crandall, founder of the memorial, said to the crowd of about 1,500. "Today we say to them across the generations, 'We have not and will not forget about you.' "
Thirteen years in the making, the 95-foot-wide, 12-foot-tall structure consists of 21 glass panels positioned at varying angles to signify the fallen soldier.
The panes are inscribed with the names of soldiers killed in action and grouped by wars, beginning with the Spanish-American War of 1898 and ending with the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. There is also a separate panel for soldiers missing in action.
"I think it's absolutely wonderful," said Julie Schrock, whose son, Chad, was killed by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2010. "It's a beautiful piece of art."
Among the challenges in creating the memorial was compiling the names of soldiers because of poor historical record-keeping, a fire at the National Records Center in St. Louis in 1973 and the fact that soldiers' deaths were often not reported, according to the memorial's website.
Kristoffer Kenton, the memorial's designer, said from the outset 13 years ago the memorial was designed with the soldiers' families in mind.
"Watching them experience this wall is indescribable," he said. "This is designed to have an experience that you don't get out of other types of structures."
It wasn't just the families of the fallen who attended, though. So, too, did some of the soldiers who fought alongside them.
George Sakato, 92, wore his Medal of Honor received as a result of his actions in France in 1944 as he and Crandall placed a bouquet of columbines in front of the memorial's World War II section.
"There are names on there that were on the left side of me and the right side of me," he said. "This memorial's for them; they're never coming home. I wear this for them." (from (
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"About the Names
Perhaps the most difficult task of the last 13-years has been identifying the veterans who should be honored on the glass panels of the Colorado Freedom Memorial. Seems like it would be easy enough but there's a reason something like this hasn't been tackled before.
At our very first brainstorming meeting we set our criteria for inclusion on the Memorial. Colorado had to be the home of record of the veterans when they entered service and their death must have come from combat action, or wounds suffered in action. We also set the time of statehood as our period covered, or the Spanish-American War through today. This gave us our starting point and we began to look for names. That's when things got tough. In every war America has fought the method of keeping records was different. Technology and society have changed over the years and what was important to know in 1918 didn't apply in 2008. And as records have been transferred from paper, to microfiche, to computer, mistakes have been made and names left off. So, we started our effort to create from county clerk records, Colorado state archive records, Department of Defense records, Newspaper archives and other sources as accurate a record as we could. The result of that effort is before you today, all 5787 names we are confident of.
Is this all of them? Is the Colorado Freedom Memorial 100% accurate? Sadly, the answer is no. It's the most accurate accounting of Colorado veterans killed in action that we know of, but we're certain there are more names to discover. In fact, we have already discovered four names since the Memorial was built and two more Colorado veterans have been killed in the current war on terror. As we turn one chapter with the dedication of the Memorial we know full well our work is just beginning. We have already launched Operation Roll Call with Colorado AARP and History Colorado, asking all Coloradoans to visit www.cfmf.net and search our database to make sure we have good information for fallen heroes you know. If we're missing a name please let us know so we can add it to our granite tablet immediately and move it to the Memorial glass panels next Memorial Day. We'd also love photos and bios of the honorees so we can start telling future generations not only names, but who these heroes were. Soon we'll be convening a panel of military members, historians and Colorado citizens to review names that have been submitted for consideration to be added to the Colorado Freedom Memorial. It is our intention to keep searching and researching until the day we can stand in front of this monument and say... there they ALL are!" (from (
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To search the database (
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