A Vietnam memorial was taken out of storage on Friday and brought to City Hall to help kick off a $1.4 million fund-raiser for Freedom Memorial Park.

The park will be built on land near the corner of Bragg Boulevard and Hay Street, across from the Airborne & Special Operations Museum.

The Freedom Memorial Park Steering Committee is developing the park. The group will sell flagpoles, fountains, pavers, granite bricks and walls on which donors may place their names, said Don Talbot, chairman of the committee. He said prices for the walls, pavers and bricks should be set next week. The committee will negotiate the price for the larger items, he said.

So far, a Vietnam memorial and a monument dedicating the park have been completed, said Tom Stanley, president of the local chapter of Rolling Thunder, a nonprofit veterans organization. Stanley said he served two years in Vietnam.

Monuments on display

According the committee, the monuments will remain on display outside City Hall until phase one of the park is completed, which is scheduled for next year.

"It’s a beautiful piece of work. We didn’t want it in storage," Talbot said.

The Vietnam memorial is made up of two polished slabs of black granite. On the left is a rectangular slab showing a map of Vietnam. The right slab is a trapezoid that lists the 100 soldiers from Cumberland County who died during the war.

"The only acknowledgment they had before was their funerals," said Carolyn Culbreth, a member of the committee. "We need to show that they didn’t give their lives for nothing."

Staff writer Al Greenwood can be reached at 486-3567 or greenwooda@fayettevillenc.com

SOURCE: Fayetteville Observer - 16 March 2002 - News Section