News-Info-Alerts

Re: Honoring Missing and Captive Heroes

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: January 04, 2003

"Honoring missing and captive heroes

By Emily Battle / The News & Advance
Jan 4, 2003

Ken Swartz can't remember exactly how a 600-pound slab of greenstone came into his life, but he's been hauling it around for a while now, and would like to give it a final resting place at Monument Terrace.

Swartz engraved the stone with the image of the flag that honors the prisoners of war and missing in action from American wars.

He's working with local veterans and the city to place it as a permanent monument on the 138-step Lynchburg landmark.

It's likely that will happen, if veterans' organizations can raise the money to place the monument on the terrace.

Swartz spent much of his childhood helping out at his parents' business, Walters Memorials, formerly on Wards Road.

"My connection with Monument Terrace goes back to the 1980s," he said. "I physically have handled a lot of the stuff that's down there now."

His family's business helped sandblast and place some of the monuments that were added to the terrace in 1986, when veterans' groups worked with the city to add monuments to World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars.

The stone for the Vietnam monument came out of his grandfather's yard, he said.

Swartz works at Ericsson, and his family is no longer in the memorials business, but it seems he still has a role to play in how the city's most-photographed monument will evolve.

The stone he used for the POW/MIA monument has been hanging around his family's shop for at least 20 years.

The roughly 16 square-foot slab of granite, which is about 10 inches thick, was sent to Georgia to be sawed, and Swartz was sent to bring it back to Lynchburg, he said.

"It almost became a piece of yard art at a North Carolina weigh station," when it put his truck 72 pounds over the limit on the trip back.

Somehow, as Swartz saw the stone passed in and out of his parents' shop, and at one point buried in a puddle of mud, he thought he might be able to make something of it.

"I said, 'Mom, I'd like to have dubs on it,'" he said.

Then one day in 1999, Swartz was downtown filling out property tax forms.

"I parked up on Court Street and just decided I'd walk down the steps," he said. "I noticed there were a lot of blank spaces. I just got to thinking, 'Gee, we've got some blank spots. … I've got this piece of greenstone and maybe we need to have something for the POW/MIAs.'"

He started contacting local veterans, and got hooked up with Steve Bozeman, a Vietnam veteran who's been involved with the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the Vietnam Veterans Association and the Marine Corps League.

The two started talking about possible designs for the stone.

Bozeman wrote a letter to the city in 1999, when he learned of planned renovations to Monument Terrace. He asked the city to consider adding a POW/MIA monument, and mentioned that Swartz had something in mind that wouldn't cost them anything.

Their efforts got a jump-start in 2000, when Bozeman learned Lynchburg could be a host of the Moving Wall, a half-size replica of the Washington, D.C., Vietnam Veterans Memorial that has been touring the country for 20 years.

Bozeman nudged Swartz to have the POW/MIA monument ready in time to display alongside the wall.

Local veterans' groups raised $15,000 to bring the wall to Lynchburg, and Bozeman said about $4,000 is still sitting in an account held by the Vietnam Veterans Association, "with the thinking that somewhere down the road, we could use it to help defray the placement costs" for a POW/MIA memorial on Monument Terrace.

Since then, the stone has made appearances at the American Legion, back at Swartz's workshop, and now in the Marine Corps League parking lot on Lakeside Drive.

"He's got this old truck with a lifting device he uses to haul it around," Bozeman said.

"And it's getting wore out," Swartz finished.

The memorial is being worked into the city's $2 million renovation of Monument Terrace, which is scheduled to start this spring.

Lee Newland, with the city engineering department, said nothing had been finalized on whether or where the POW/MIA monument would be placed, but money for the addition will be expected to come from private fundraising.

Bozeman said that once he gets an estimate on how much that will cost, he hopes to rally local veterans not only to raise the money, but also to help take care of the monument once it's refurbished.

Swartz said the issue of those taken prisoner while fighting is something people need to be aware of when they consider past and future wars.

Although he isn't a veteran, his father fought in World War II, and his grandfather in World War I.

"I'm a Navy brat," he said. "It's just my background."

Bozeman was shot down in a helicopter twice while serving in Vietnam.

"I was never a POW. Just by happenstance, I was shot down in a safe area," he said.

"But the issue of POWs is sort of a thing that's one of the side bars of any conflict. It transcends all wars. That's what Monument Terrace does. It honors those folks who fought as a reminder that our freedoms don't come for free."

Contact Emily Battle at ebattle@newsadvance.com or (434) 385-5530.

© 2003 Media General"