Progress continues on the Hartington Veterans Memorial
HARTINGTON — The Hartington Area Veterans Memorial design is beginning to take shape and the sponsorships of the veteran names to be engraved on the monuments are coming in steadily, according to Dan Kathol, Project Chairman of the new memorial.
A lot of time is currently being spent working with the monument company on the final design of the memorial and all the components that will make up the final memorial, Kathol said.
Important in the design process is trying to come up with efficiencies without compromising quality and establishing the cost of each component of the memorial so that a target budget can be finalized and presented when the formal fundraising begins.
“Our goal is to use local contractors as much as possible on the memorial construction and to be in a financial position throughout the construction of the memorial to pay the expenses as they occur,” said Kathol.
There are currently 1150 veteran names on a list that was compiled from various sources, and the list of Harlington area veterans dates back to the Civil War period up to the current time.
‘We expect this list of veterans to grow, as there are a number of veterans who grew up in the Hartington area and served in the military and moved away and they are not on any local list of veterans,”said Kathol.
Currently 38 percent of the veteran sponsorships that have been received are not on the original list of veterans, which indicates there is a large number of potential veterans from throughout the country that could be sponsored and their names included on the monument.
“Key to us achieving our goal of ‘No Veteran Left Behind’ is for families to spread the word within their family and relatives to capture all the veterans for the period extending from the late 1800s up to the present time,” said Kathol. “Hopefully, area families will do their research to identify relatives who were veterans and share the $150 sponsorship donation so that all their relatives and family members who are veterans can have their name included on one of the memorial monuments.”
The veteran list includes all military veterans who have any affiliation at all with the greater Hartington area having lived here or away, and both living and dead, from the Civil War period up to the present day. This includes all National Guard and Reserve veterans and all military personnel still on active duty. The veteran’s full name and the branch of service he/she served in will be engraved on one of six monuments being planned for the memorial and all the names will be in alphabetical order.
To allow for any late or future veterans, name additions to the memorial, four to five lines will be left under the last name of each alphabetic letter so additional names can be added. In order to plan far into the future, there will be room to add additional monuments so future veterans can be added to the memorial for many years to come. To allow enough time to gather all the possible veteran names, a target date of Dec. 31, 2020, was set to have all the veteran names sponsored and included on the list to be engraved.
In addition to the six monuments for the veteran names, there will be a monument for each of the five military branches and on the back of each will be a history of one of the major wars fought by Americans.
There will be a special monument that will represent the three Harlington veteran service organizations and lighted flags to include the American flag, the Nebraska state flag and the POW/MIA flag.
Benches, a donor board, ornamental shrubs and trees and smaller monuments with various military quotes and sayings will also be part of the memorial.
“Our goal is to make the veterans memorial an educational experience for anyone who visits and provide enough to read and ponder on that will bring true relevance to the freedom we enjoy because of the sacrifices made on our behalf by our veterans,” Kathol said.
The entrance to the memorial will be on the west end, directly off of Broadway Avenue and will include an arch above the entrance. The entire memorial will be at street level so walls must be built on the north, east and south sides and new dirt brought in and compacted before the memorial concrete floor can be poured. A wrought iron fence will be placed on top of the wall that will surround the entire memorial except for the entrance. The entire memorial will be lighted to allow night visitations.
Before the work can begin on the walls, all the current dirt on site must be taken out. New dirt will be brought in after the walls are in place and compacted to avoid any settling after the memorial is completed.
The removal of the current dirt will begin soon after the ground breaking ceremony planned for Sunday, May 24, the day before Memorial Day, with a reception and presentation planned immediately after the groundbreaking at the Historic Hartington Hotel just across the street from the memorial grounds.
“The target date for the completion and the dedication of the veteran’s memorial is Veterans Day, Nov. 9, 2021, if all goes well with the fundraising and the construction. Since our goal is to ‘Leave No Veteran Behind,’ the memorial dedication date is somewhat flexible as we need to take the necessary time to exhaust all efforts to find sponsors for the veterans on our list and those not on the list,” said Kathol. “Importantly, we need to have raised all the necessary funds to pay for the project before we can finish and dedicate the memorial. Bottom line, we want a veterans’ memorial we can all be proud of and that gives proper honor and respect to our veterans. We all have a debt to pay for the freedom we enjoy and supporting this project is one way we can help retire our own debt by honoring those veterans.”
Veteran families are encouraged to get their veteran sponsorship forms and donations in as soon as possible so the names can be compiled and also to help provide the needed revenue to help fund the project along with other financial donations and gift-in-kind labor and materials.
Veteran sponsorship forms to sponsor or adopt a veteran are available at the Hartington Post Office, Senior Center and City Office, County Treasurer, Steffen Drug, Foodtown, Casey’s, Stop’n Go, Keith’s Liquor, Cellular One and all Harlington banks. Call Dan Kathol at (402) 640-3334 or email him at kathold@hartel.net with any questions or have a form sent to a friend or relative.