By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Last December, the Great Bend City Council approved a spot for a new Vietnam veterans memorial to be placed at Veterans Memorial Park. Larry Parsons, a Vietnam veteran, was instrumental in bringing The Wall That Heals to Great Bend last May. He's also been a key figure in creating the new memorial.
"I think it's very important for the Vietnam veterans to have a permanent place where they can go and maybe visit with each other and maybe just sit there and observe the wall," he said. "I've told a lot of people, at The Wall, when you approached somebody who was a Vietnam veteran, a lot of times it was hard to talk about it but once you got to talking about it, they just talked and talked."
B&B Metal Arts out of Hoisington will complete the metalwork. All said, the memorial will cost approximately $115,000. Parsons said approximately $80,000 has already been raised.
"We would like to see a lot of the Great Bend citizens get in on that and feel like they're a part of that," Parsons said.
The five-person committee, all veterans, working on the project plans to purchase the stainless steel for the memorial this week. The memorial will be located just west of the main entrance to the park on McKinley Street.
"As the city council said, it's long overdue," Parsons said. "The one thing I wish we would have done differently is if we'd done this 10-15 years ago. They say only about 25-30 percent of the Vietnam veterans are still alive."
The memorial will sit on an 18-inch concrete base and will feature two 25-foot-long wings ranging from 2.5 to 5 feet tall. A 3-D stainless-steel Huey UH-1 helicopter will add another few feet in height. The memorial will also feature 12 elephant plants, and at both ends of the wall, five-foot-tall troops hiding in the elephant grass. A 15 x 24-inch stainless-steel plaque will tell the story of the memorial and feature the names of veterans.
Parsons hopes the memorial will be completed by October with a dedication for Veterans Day on Monday, Nov. 11. Donations for the memorial are tax deductible and can be mailed to the Great Bend Foundation, PO Box 533, Great Bend, Kansas, 67530.