Memorial reminds people of fallen soldiers
More than 380 pairs of boots and shoes representing people killed in the Iraq war sat in neat lines on the lawn outside Logan City Hall Sunday and Monday.
The boots represent each of the National Guard members and all Utah soldiers who have died in Iraq since the United States first invaded, and are part of a larger national exhibit which has more than 2,700 boots, representing all U.S. military casualties in the war, said Brenda Chung, coordinator for the exhibit.
“The full exhibit has become so large that it has become cost-prohibitive to travel with, so they don’t show it in most cities,” she said.
Instead, smaller exhibits travel in various states around the country. The exhibit in Logan had just come from Boise, Idaho, and organizers are hoping to display it in Salt Lake City, as well as other cities in the state, Chung said.
The boots, each tagged with the name, military rank, age and home state of a National Guard member who has died in Iraq, covered the section of lawn just south of City Hall. There were also 13 pairs of boots on display representing all military personnel from Utah who have died. Chung said that there are actually 14 soldiers from Utah who have died in Iraq, but the family of one of those contacted Chung and asked that their family member not be represented in the display.
One section of the exhibit consisted of 50 pairs of civilian shoes and one unmarked pair of combat boots, representing Iraqi civilians who have died in the conflict.
“The actual count of Iraqis who have died is tough to pin, but estimates are that for every U.S. military death, there are 50 Iraqi civilian deaths,” Chung said. “That’s why we have the one pair of unmarked boots with the 50 pairs of shoes, to represent that 50-1 ratio.”
The public response to the exhibit has mostly been positive, according to Omkar Kalaskar, a senior at Logan High School, who was present to help with the event. “It’s a lot better than a few years ago when the war was just starting,” Kalaskar said.
War protests or exhibits like this were much more likely to be met with opposition and make people angry before, but public opinion is shifting, he said.
Even so, not everyone has been happy about the memorial, as Maria Melendez, a volunteer helping with the exhibit, pointed out.
“We have had two pro-war people come by,” Melendez said. “We just emphasize that it’s not political; it’s about awareness-raising.”
Chung said that she spoke to several people who have military family members currently in Iraq who find the exhibit distressing.
“I completely respect those feelings,” she said. “It is a very distressing thing.”
Don Shawe, a 90-year-old World War II veteran who was assisting with the exhibit, said he traveled from Oregon to take part in Marshall Thompson’s walk across Utah to protest the war, and stayed to help with the exhibit. “I think the war in Iraq is a criminal war,” Shawe said. “I’ve been very opposed to it from the beginning.”
The exhibit was sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, which is a Quaker organization.
dfelix@cc.usu.edu