Desert Storm Prompts Monuments To Patriotism

A granite obelisk 7 feet tall, a monument to the men and women of Desert Storm, stands in front of the nursing home in Whitehouse, Texas, where the residents can gaze upon it with pride, as they should. They built it.

Scores of similar monuments have sprung up in towns and cities across the land in the year since the war ended. War memorials traditionally are somber edifices, tributes to the fallen. Desert Storm monuments are different.

It seems that Americans, their chests swelled, were of a mind to celebrate the swift victory in the Persian Gulf and honor the warriors who brought it about, the living and the dead.

So they held bake sales and car washes and church suppers and raised money the grass-roots American way. The results were, shall we say, monumental.

Desert Storm monuments went up in Waycross and Valdosta, Ga.; Middlesboro, Ky.; Williamsfield, Aledo and Galesburg, Ill.; Ardmore, Okla.; Florence and Myrtle Beach, S.C.; New Castle, Muncie, and Anderson, Ind.; Greenville, Stanton, and Lowell, Mich.; Taunton, Somerset and Swansea, Mass; and many others, maybe as many as 100, that not even the Monument Builders of North America know about.

Most were spontaneous enterprises such as the one in Whitehouse, a northeast Texas town of about 2,100.

The residents of the Oakbrook Health Care Center there were old enough to remember the civilian efforts during the last "good" war, as the social commentator Studs Terkel called World War II. Some remembered rolling bandages and socks for the GIs.

For them, the Gulf War struck close to home. Of the 148 Americans who lost their lives, their neighbor four houses down, Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel Patrick Walker, was the first Texan.

This time the old home-front veterans strung beads.

"We had people out there who hardly ever came out of their rooms," said their activity director, Ragena McFaul. "But there they were, some who couldn't see at all stringing these beads."

They strung the beads into red, white and blue bracelets with the name of someone overseas and sold them for $1 apiece. The idea caught on and they took orders. They made more than 6,000 bracelets and shipped them as far as Hawaii and Germany.

They raised enough for a batch of CARE packages and, of course, their monument. Etched on it is the name and likeness of Lance Cpl. Walker and the names of 24 others from the Whitehouse area who served in the Gulf.

John Dianis, executive vice president of the Monument Builders of North America, says some of the monuments have a Mideastern flavor, featuring perhaps a minaret on the top. One, put up by the NCO Wives Club in Fort Stewart, Ga., features a map of Iraq pierced by a sword and words of Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf:

"I have seen in your eyes a fire of determination to get this job done quickly so that we may all return to the shores of our great nation. My confidence in you is total. Our cause is just! Now you must be the thunder and the lightning of Desert Storm."

Some monuments were paid for by support groups called Mothers Against Saddam Hussein (MASH), others by local TV stations. A car salesman in Lowell, Mich., donated $50 for every car he sold.

The Gulf monuments tended to cost between $8,000 and $10,000, although some may have gone as high as $25,000.

Traditionally, monuments have been memorials to honor the dead. The Desert Storm memorials seem to all honor the living, with organizers attempting to get every single name.

John Wilterink, vice president of Lowell Monument Company in Lowell, Mich., and a Vietnam vet, says the VFW came to him immediately to ask about a relief fund and later a Desert Storm monument. Eventually, they were to order five as Desert storm spinoffs - for World War II, Vietnam, Korea and other police actions, and possibly one for Vietnam vets missing in action.

"It's been a real learning experience for me," Wilterink said. "I never put it together before, but the men and women who fought in Desert Storm were the children of the Vietnam vets. I think they got special recognition because of who their parents were. And their parents were now elected officials and pillars of communities."

Harvey Ponder, owner of Lacky Monument Co. in Galesburg, Ill., feels that the quick and decisive victory was part of the patriotic fervor, but he feels that maybe the real inspiration is deeper.

"Slowly, but surely, we're getting back to the values of family and morals and religion," he says. "For 25 years, things have gone to rot. There wasn't a tomorrow, there wasn't anything more than life today."

Ponder notes that despite a bad economy people are buying small headstones, honoring dead parents and loved ones whose graves had not been marked before.

"We're coming back as a country," he says.