Valley veterans hail new memorial

Veterans Day 2008

Gallery

By Ed Runyan

Roger Ailes said the values of his upbringing in Warren have been part of everything he does.

WARREN — Veterans were just about frozen by the time they were invited to stand inside the new Trumbull County Veterans Memorial on Courthouse Square for the unveiling of the new World War II bronze statue.

But after the covering was removed and they could see the bronze sculpture made from a painting by Col. Charles Waterhouse of a Marine during the invasion of Iwo Jima, their hearts were warm.

“It’s great. It’s an action photo. It’s very realistic,” Bill Sauer of Champion said a short time later. Sauer is a World War II veteran whose father and grandfather also served in the military.

“I just can’t believe it. It’s really beautiful,” said Alfred Gaskell of Howland, another World War II vet. “A lot of hard work went into this.”

The men were standing inside of the circular new memorial, which is along Mahoning Avenue on the west side of the square.

The sculpture is the focal point of the memorial, but it incorporates previously built monuments into a new paved area with walls containing bricks holding the names of thousands of local military veterans.

The Civil War statue in Monument Park remains in the same location, but the World War I, Vietnam War and Korean War statues were all relocated to create a plaza, where people can walk to each monument and sit on park benches.

Future plans call for lighting, additional benches and plaques giving facts on each of the wars depicted, organizers of the $400,000 project say.

Tuesday’s Veterans Day celebration took on added significance because of the dedication of the new memorial and the presence of Warren native Roger Ailes, Fox News president and adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Also on hand were members of Gov. Ted Strickland’s Cabinet, including Bill Hartnett, director of the Ohio Department of Veterans Services.

“The fact that you’ve decided to call out the World War II veterans is very gratifying, but as you look behind you here, this memorial calls out all of the veterans,” Hartnett, of Mansfield, said during his remarks.

All the veterans honored by the memorials served their country to preserve the same freedoms and stand behind “two of the greatest documents ever written: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,” he said.

By building the memorial, Hartnett said, the community has “memorialized these veterans so that in years to come when somebody walks this park, they may see their grandfather’s brick or their father’s brick or their great-grandfather’s brick and realize that they were a part of that veteran’s generation that lives today and those that have passed over the river.”

Randy Baker, a Warren architect, said he was asked to design a base for a World War II statue and help figure out a way to pay for the $85,000 one-of-a-kind artwork. Baker designed a wall reminiscent of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., to hold 1,000 bricks that would pay for the statue.

But interest in the bricks soared, so Baker designed two more flanking walls on the sides to hold another 3,000 bricks. In the past couple weeks, volunteers worked tirelessly to finish the project, but the company making the bricks couldn’t get them all finished in time for Tuesday’s ceremony, organizers said.

“We wanted to bring together the World War I and Civil War monuments and use the brick walls as kind of arms to encompass the monuments,” Baker said.

The sculptor, Robert Eccleston of Lake Placid, N.Y., said the painting that was model for the sculpture showed a Marine holding his Browning automatic at eye level, even though most soldiers would have fired it from waist level.

This was done to show the defiance of the soldier, “to show that they were not going to let anyone beat them,” Eccleston said.

“It seemed like he put a mold over a living human being,” Patrick Liste, of Weathersfield, said of the realistic nature of the sculpture.

Ailes, a 1958 Harding High graduate who brought his wife and 8-year-old son with him, visited some of his favorite Warren locations while here.

As a kid, he learned to swim at the YMCA, attended the Presbyterian church and fed pigeons in Courthouse Park — all within sight of the new memorial, he said.

“In my travels over the years, I’ve always taken Ohio with me,” Ailes said. “Everywhere I’ve traveled, I’ve taken the traditions, the values I’ve learned in this town. It’s a part of everything I’ve done, including Fox News,” he said.

runyan@vindy.com