SNOHOMISH — Behind every line item within the state’s massive $3.8 billion capital budget, there is a story.
In the case of one of the tiniest appropriations, it can be argued there are 81 stories.
That is how many names are on a granite memorial beneath the flag pole at Veterans Memorial Stadium on the Snohomish High School campus.
The names are etched in black in the shiny gray stone. They belong to the young men from Snohomish who joined the military but never came home.
In recent years, two large cracks formed and grew, creeping down either side of the monument and through the names held dear.
Experts examined the monolith. The rock cannot be repaired.
So students and teachers decided it must be replaced. They received estimates of between $10,000 and $20,000 and looked for help.
Capt. Will Lennon, senior Marine instructor for the school’s JROTC program, remembers the conversations he had with his students and with Tuck Gionet, a civics teacher, and Mark Perry, the school’s athletic director. Gionet and Perry each have been at the school for more than a quarter century.
“I have had friends that were killed in combat,” Lennon said. “The fact that it’s called Veterans Memorial Stadium, we should show that we recognize that and this is important to us.”
Perry well remembers the last name to be added to the monument. It is Jeffrey B. Starr, a Snohomish High graduate and Marine who was killed in combat operations just three weeks from finishing his third tour in Iraq in 2005. He was 22.
Before he was athletic director, Perry was a math teacher and football and wrestling coach. He has passed by the memorial countless times over the years.
“Even now, you get a chance to walk through under the American flag and see the names of those who sacrificed their lives for us, it is a surreal feeling that we have our freedoms because of their sacrifices.”
Other names belong to former Snohomish students who served in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
Students Allison Hoeth, Cameron Calder and Tanner Foust each played a role in landing $10,000 from the Legislature to replace the memorial, Lennon said.
Each session, Gionet tries to take students to the capital to see up close how state government works. Often the teens have written their own legislation and lobby the merits with lawmakers. Before and during a January trip to Olympia, Snohomish students made their case for help with the memorial.
The school district was asked for the remainder.
Along the way, the students left a photo of the cracking monument at Rep. Hans Dunshee’s office in Olympia. He’d been to Gionet’s classroom in December and learned about the need.
Dunshee not only is from Snohomish, he’s also chairman of the House Capital Budget committee.
The photo made an impression.
He taped it to a wall in his office. In a multibillion-dollar budget, he didn’t want to forget such a small request.
“That’s the low, low, low end,” he said. “I really like the civics element of the kids working on it.”
So does Perry.
“For them to have that instinct to say, ‘Let’s fix this and do it right,’ I thought that was pretty mature thinking on their part.”
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
