MARSHFIELD – A memorial sits along the south side of Veterans Parkway, commanding attention from anyone who travels Marshfield's thoroughfare.
It wasn't always there—many can remember when an old warehouse sat on that foundation—but sometime in the decades after the parkway’s construction, several community members decided the foundation, where thousands of people passed each day, should hold something more.
The memorial emerged from collective grief and pride, reflecting both the faces of those who stop to remember and the endless stream of traffic flowing past on Veterans Parkway — a ribbon of asphalt named for the people who sacrificed their lives for the country.
The concept of the memorial was developed by former Alder Tom Buttke and longtime Alder Mike Feirer shortly after Veterans Parkway was named.
The memorial featured flags and murals, representing the Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, Air Force and the POW-MIA.
An anchor was added, and a bronze statue of a combat medic treating a GI was placed in memory of Joe Altmann, who died in Afghanistan in 2011.
The memorial now also features a Purple Heart Memorial and granite etchings listing those who lost their lives from Marshfield, and soon it will feature a Gold Star Mother memorial.
“We’ve got 136 names on that wall there, of Spanish-American, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. So we figured that’s the perfect place for the Gold Star Mothers to be near their kids, the statue. So, every one of those boys had a Gold Star Mother, and they all had a Purple Heart,” said Feirer, who is still involved in the project’s development.
“Well, you know, we put up the Purple Heart Memorial. We talked about that for about three years, and then we got that one up. And then Paul Rogers and I decided we should finish this project. So we decided to go and get the Gold Star Mother as soon as possible.”
The Gold Star Mother monument will feature a sleek black bench, along with a statue.
“There's going to be just a phrase on one side, talking about the Gold Star Mothers, and there's going to be a gold star on the one other side — a bronze gold star — and then the bench is going to say ‘American Legion Post 54 and Elks Lodge No. 665’ — they're helping us put that memorial up,” Feirer explained.
The mural panels are also being updated — being reproduced on aluminum — with one more monument to come next year.
“It was always the plan to put up at least three more monuments on the top. We wanted a Howitzer, but we can't get them. They all went to Ukraine,” Feier explained.
The memorial will be christened “Veterans Parkway Memorial” and the Gold Star Mother monument will be dedicated during a Veterans Day ceremony, held this Nov. 11 at 11 a.m. at the memorial site, just south of the Everett Roehl Marshfield Public Library on Veterans Parkway in Marshfield.
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