STANWOOD — Volunteers plan to fill an open yard in downtown Stanwood with a brick and granite memorial honoring local veterans who died while serving in a foreign war.
A community veterans memorial has been designed for the grassy property next to the Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center at 27130 102nd Ave NW. It’s the same spot where the annual Fourth of July parade ends.
The memorial would be a plaza with six brick kiosks topped by granite surfaces engraved with the names of fallen soldiers. Five of the kiosks would be for different conflicts: World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. The sixth kiosk would be a thank you message to all men and women who have served or are serving in the military.
Bill Keller and Jim Joyce have been heading up the planning for about four years. The Stanwood Area Historical Society got behind the project and is providing the land and a nonprofit for fundraising.
Joyce is a retired Navy captain. He served from 1966 to 1993. He enlisted on a Friday and got a draft notice the following Monday, he said.
“I joined three days before they joined me,” he said.
He and Keller have been friends since they went to school together in Stanwood 57 years ago. Keller is the mastermind behind the memorial planning. It was inspired by a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
One of their classmates, George Broz, died in Vietnam a few years after they graduated. His name is on the national wall and is one of the 44 names that initially would go on the Stanwood memorial. History buff and researcher Richard Hanks helped them gather the names of 10 veterans who died in World War I, 21 who died in World War II, three in Korea, six in Vietnam, three in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.
It wasn’t easy to decide where to draw the line for whose names to include, but they settled on those who died in combat and had lived somewhere within the Stanwood-Camano School District, Keller said. That’s a large area, from around Warm Beach nearly up to Conway and from Bryant on the east to the west edge of Camano Island.
“We expect what will happen is once this thing is built someone will come to the memorial and say, ‘Gee, my grandpa died in World War II,’?” Keller said. “We know we’re going to have to be able to add names.”
The goal is to start building the memorial in May or June and finish it by Veterans Day in November. They’d like to have it done in time for a Veterans Day parade downtown.
The memorial could become a place for teaching young people about history and service, Joyce said.
“Kids don’t get much in the way of history anymore and if they do it’s kind of ho-hum,” he said. “We thought by putting this here with the names of people from Stanwood, it might generate some interest.”
The design went through a lot of changes over four years to find something simple, sturdy and beautiful that would fit in downtown Stanwood and be affordable, Joyce said.
“We think that it’s really simple but it shows respect to what we’re doing and the veterans we’re honoring,” Keller said.
To build the memorial, they need to raise $45,000. The budget for the plaza and kiosks is about $25,000 and the remaining $20,000 of the total is for installing poles to hold flags for each branch of the military. Though construction could start once they’ve raised $25,000, it would be much easier to build the entire memorial at once so they can put the plaza in around the flagpoles rather than adding the poles later, Joyce said.
Local businesses already have offered to give supplies and equipment and workers have volunteered their time. The group still is looking for an electrician and landscaper who would like to help.
To volunteer or learn more about the veterans memorial, email Richard Hanks at sahsrh2@aol.com.
Donations can be mailed to the historical society at PO Box 69, Stanwood, WA, 98292. They should be labeled “Community Veterans Memorial.”
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
