Groundbreaking Ceremony - May 30, 2019
Posted | Apr 01, 2019 Pensacola, Fla., April 1, 2019: The gulf coast area Gold Star Families
Memorial Monument group has gained the approval of Pensacola Mayor
Grover Robinson to place the monument at the Veterans Memorial Park of
Pensacola during 2020. There will be an official groundbreaking ceremony
conducted at the park, in conjunction with the Heroes Among Us speakers
event, on Thursday, May 30th at 5:30pm. Many of our area’s Gold Star
family members have joined in support of the project and a community
education and fundraising campaign has been initiated for the Gulf Coast
area and beyond.
Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Hershel
“Woody” Williams, whose extraordinary valor during the Battle of Iwo
Jima in 1945 is itself legendary, founded the Gold Star Families
Memorial project as part of the living legacy of America’s fading
“greatest generation.” But in our greater Pensacola community, we
witness continuation of this living legacy every day. It is in the
dedicated active-service members who train, work and live here; in the
tens of thousands of Veterans and military retirees and their loved ones
who make this their home; and in the many patriotic and concerned
citizens who constantly come through for our heroes.
Among them
all are Pensacola’s own Gold Star Families representing those that gave
their lives and who have continued to bear the burden of their loss of a
loved one.
To date, forty-seven uniform Gold Star Families
monuments have been place at sites in 41 U.S. states. Fifty-eight more
are in process. The purpose of each is to recognize the importance of
families, and the role they play in forming citizens for service. Truly,
these monuments pay a lasting and formal tribute to the ultimate
sacrifice made by our warriors and the never-ending sacrifice endured by
those who mourn them.
“We come together too often to mourn the
loss of our brave fighting men and women,” said Ed Spears, Gold Star
uncle of Corporal J.R. Spears, of Molino, Fla., KIA on 23 October 2005
during Operation Iraqi Freedom. “But there are living memorials among us
– families and friends who carry the burden daily. For them, the truly
hard part is living, picking up the pieces, putting them back together
in some semblance of order. To bravely carry on. The Gold Star Families
Memorial project acknowledges and pays tribute to the suffering,
sacrifice, honor, and dignity of the survivors who are the living legacy
of the fallen.”
“Americans accept as a sacred trust the
obligation to honor our fallen warriors,” said former Memorial Park
Foundation President Jack Brown. “We honor the families they leave
behind, but perhaps not in a lasting, concrete way. We should. As was
said of Lincoln, our fallen belong to the ages now. Yet those who are
left to carry on suffer the most cruel burden of loss to strike the
human heart and soul. We can honor them at the same beautiful place our
community has set aside to honor their fallen. Many other communities
have shown us the way – all thanks to a brave Marine who picked up a
flame thrower on Iwo Jima in 1945. That Marine, Woody Williams, vowed to
remember those who did not return from battle, and the families who
gave them up for service. We can do the same at the Veterans Memorial
Park of Pensacola.”