Veterans Memorial Bricks
MEMORIAL WALL TO BE BUILT TO HONOR LOCAL VETERANS
Plans by John Reedy to honor veterans of the U. S. Armed Forces have hit a brick wall, but according to the Pike County veterans service officer that's actually a good thing.
Friday marks Veterans Day, and amidst a 1 p.m. ceremony to honor past and present servicemen at the Pike County Fairgrounds, Reedy will kick off what he calls the "Buy a Brick - Salute a Vet" campaign.
Bricks - each engraved with a veteran's name, rank, military branch and years of service - will be sold to the public and then used to construct several memorial walls at the site of the Pike County Veterans Flagpole at the fairground, he explained. "We're going to have a 16-foot circle around the flagpole," said Reedy. "We'll call it the Circle of Honor for veterans who died in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf wars."
Plans also allow for constructing of two more walls behind the flagpole, one for veterans still living and an additional wall for those who have passed on, whether in battle or due to natural causes. The walls have already been named, Reedy said: All Gave Some and Some Gave All.
At the Friday ceremony, Pike County veterans will be acknowledged with the dedication of a bronze plaque in their honor, to be installed at the base of the flagpole. The local veterans service office purchased the plaque for public display sometime ago, said Jim Heibel, president of the Pike County Veterans Service Commission.
"We didn't have the funds to get it mounted on stone," he said.
A recent veterans car show sponsored by the veterans service office generated $1,000 in profits used to prepare the plaque for installation.
Reedy thinks the site will become an attraction, especially if military artifacts - a retired helicopter, Navy landing boat or Army tank, for example - can be added, similar to a war memorial in Ashland, Kentucky.
Regardless, he thinks bricks will be continually added to the walls over time drawing crowds at the Pike County Fairgrounds.
"This could be a never ending thing," Reedy said.
Forms to personalize veterans bricks should be available by Veterans Day, said Reedy. Construction on the wall could begin sometime in spring 2006, he said, but it depends on how many bricks are sold between now and then.
The veterans service officer will be promoting Veterans Day before it arrives, starting tomorrow at the activity center of Bristol Village in Waverly with a presentation to seniors about how veterans serving in foreign wars have promoted American freedom.
"My son, John Thomas Reedy, is going to Iraq," said Reedy. "It's difficult when it hits so close to home."
Reedy's son is a corporal in the U. S. Marine Corps stationed at Camp Pendleton in California.
He will also attend a veterans recognition day at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth on Thursday and a Vietnam veterans parade in downtown Chillicothe on Saturday called "Welcome Home - 30 Years Late" headed up by Ray Pryor, director of the not-for-profit South Central Ohio Homeless Veterans Committee.
The Waverly News Watchman
November 9, 2005
by Van Rose, Staff Writer
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(Subject line veterans memorial brick)
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