Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 27, 1994 TAG: 9408130003
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Fariss, who was never enthused about the spit-and-polish aspects of the Army during his service from 1962 to 1984, nevertheless shined his brass and colonel's wings to step down from the county Board of Supervisors and speak as a citizen on the issue.
The hearing Monday night brought out nearly 70 people, many of them wearing American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars uniforms. They wanted the board to stick with its original decision to keep the memorial on the front lawn of the historic Old Courthouse. It did. But members decided to remove an eternal flame as part of the memorial.
Only Gene Nuckols, a lawyer, spoke against a front-lawn spot for the memorial. He said that he was presenting their petitions as a favor to fellow veteran Donald Glenn.
The petitions contained the signatures of more than 350 people. None of them addressed the board, although the New River Valley Preservation League filed a letter expressing concern that the memorial would detract from the historical significance of the courthouse, reconstructed through a county bond issue after being gutted by fire in 1989.
The bond issue approved by county voters included the war memorial, but Nuckols said the assumption had been that it would go in front of the more modern brick courthouse being renovated on Third Street.
Nuckols said the flame could attract vandals and ``would be an eternal cost to the county, too.'' The flame facilities would have cost more than $4,000 to build, and natural gas to keep it burning would have cost more than $2,000 a year.
``If we have the eternal flame, that's fine. If we don't have it, we still want the memorial,'' said Bill Manning, speaking on behalf of VFW Post 1184 and American Legion Post 7. ``The eternal flame is not the memorial. It's just an added attraction.''
There has never been any opposition to the memorial itself. Some people thought the location would affect the historical integrity of the Old Courthouse, and some Main Street merchants worried that the size of the monument would keep them from staging downtown promotional events on the lawn.
But one of those merchants, Karen Graham, a veteran and the wife of a disabled veteran, said the memorial is ``just as important and just as historical as that beautiful building.''
Howard Sadler, who was a Marine officer during Vietnam, said the memorial needed to be in the most prominent place possible and that was the front of the Old Courthouse. He said fear of vandalism was no reason not to honor those who had made the supreme sacrifice.
``In my opinion, it'll be the biggest attraction Pulaski ever had outside of Cougar football,'' said Mark Cox, who was involved in discussions about the memorial from the beginning, five years ago.
After Cox spoke, Fariss asked for a brief recess. He stepped outside and returned in the uniform he had worn at an Army hospital which received two airplane loads per night of servicemen wounded in the Vietnam War.
``I saw too many young men come back mutilated. I had to pronounce too many young men dead. ... They can give no more than what they have given,'' Fariss said.
He also recalled how people in the service during that time were blamed for the war by protesters. ``When you left the post, you were told to take your uniform off. You might be spit on,'' he said.
Now is the time to honor the six Pulaski County residents killed in that war, as well as those killed in other wars, he said. He signaled County Attorney Tom McCarthy to turn on an audio tape, of a bugle playing ``Taps,'' which brought the entire audience to its feet and produced some audible sobs.
After that, there seemed no question about where the memorial was going to go.
County Administrator Joe Morgan had said earlier that it would be an unobtrusive addition to the courthouse lawn, anyway.
``From the Main Street view, the prominent feature will be two flagpoles. On the lawn itself, two circles and a monument about 3 feet in height will honor those killed in action ... and those missing in action or prisoners of war,'' he said.
The lawn display also will include the old bell from the courthouse tower which fell during the 1989 fire but was rescued from the rubble and reassembled.
Morgan said the Courthouses Committee and retired Army Col. Dallas Cox had spent considerable time ``coming up with a memorial concept that would be in harmony with the aesthetics of the old courthouse and its lawn.'' Fariss noted that the courthouse itself, despite its place on state and national historic registers, has been changed over the years from its original look.
The names of those killed in action will be inscribed in a black marble stone, while prisoners or missing service people will be in white marble. Although the construction firm was to be notified Tuesday to proceed with the project, no completion date had been set.
by CNB