To the faces forming a rectangle around my story, this is their day.
All these men have died since Sept. 11, 2001, since the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon exploded and a Pennsylvania field became a secluded graveyard.
Their names are engraved on a new tribute at the state veterans cemetery, and the tarps covering those names will be pulled off on Monday.
Memorial Day.
“I’m a little nervous,” Preston Lawrance of Loudon told me near the Global War on Terror Memorial. “It’s the first memorial I have ever unveiled. I’m excited, but I had a lot of help. I’m not a one-man show.”
That’s true. There are volunteer board members and corporate and private donors, and Ryan Pitts of Mont Vernon, a Medal of Honor recipient and Monday’s keynote speaker.
But ideas like this must start somewhere, so let’s start with Lawrance, whose soul, I suspect, is colored red, white and blue.
He’s 67, employed by a printing distributor in Laconia. He also volunteers for the Civil Air Patrol, is the son of an Air Force officer, listens to war stories told by old men at the Veterans Home in Tilton, and never met a door he wasn’t willing to knock on to raise money for this granite display of honor.
Fittingly, the idea grew from his trip to Vermont on Memorial Day, 2014. Lawrance went to visit his buddy, a Vietnam veteran who had died from a heart attack. Then he went to pay his respects to his late parents, buried in Colchester, Vt. He stopped at that state veterans cemetery, and something caught his eye, shaking him to his patriotic core.
“I noticed this big monument off to the right and a little parking area,” Lawrance said. “I went up and saw this beautiful memorial and it said war on terror, for fallen Vermonters, around 35 that were permanently engraved in the monument.
“I was very moved by that.”
He began to wonder. Did we have a tribute in Boscawen to the post-9/11 military, to those who have died since? Lawrance didn’t think so, but the idea was so good, we had to have already thought of this, right?
Lawrance toured NH’s veteran cemetery, just to see. Then he sprang into action, creating a six-person board, which included Peter Burdett of Bow.
Burdett is a financial adviser who served as a U.S. naval aviator for more than 20 years. He flew helicopters and coordinated mine sweeps in the Persian Gulf during our first war against Iraq.
Lawrance’s idea, Burdett knew, was a good one. Fundraising (in this case about $100,000) would not be an obstacle.
“They rallied around and they understand what the meaning of the memorial is,” Burdett said. “They all wanted to be part of it.”
Added Lawrance, “I knocked on business doors, and at most of them, I got a good reception.”
Ryan Pitts knocked on some of those doors, in the southern part of the state, where he lives with his wife and two small children. There is no better spokesman for this type of cause than this type of man, although Pitts would be the last person to tell you that.
But it’s true.
In the Battle of Wanat on July 13, 2008, Pitts was part of a 48-man fighting force that got ambushed by 200 anti-Afghan forces. He was hit with shrapnel and nearly died. He fired blindly over a wall of sandbags. He whisepered over the radio to relay enemy positions to the command post, mindful to be quiet because the enemy was close enough for him to hear them talking.
President Obama draped the Medal of Honor around Pitts’s neck at the White House, a ceremony attended by Burdett, not to mention the joint chiefs of staff, the secretary of state, the secretary of the army and families of those lost in battle.
Nine of Pitts’s brothers died in Wanat, a list he’s been repeating ever since he got out of the hospital. It’s a group of names he’ll recite forever, a nugget of information far more important to him than what he endured that awful day eight years ago.
That’s why he jumped at the chance to speak on Monday. He has no prepared speech. He knows what needs to be said.
“The guys I lost, my brothers, they left an impact on me,” Pitts said by phone. “I can use that to make a difference in my kids’ lives. They’re going to know the stories of my buddies.”
Fifty state buddies will be honored Monday. The memorial is wrapped in blue tarp. There is a central tower with a globe on top, a plaque with quotes from General John Stark, and four walls displaying the names of the fallen 50.
Sadly, lots of room remains on those walls, a reflection that the war on terror, with no defined enemy, no clear borders, is far from over.
Nicholas Cournoyer’s name is on a wall. He lived in Gilmanton and died on Memorial Day 10 years ago, when a makeshift bomb exploded near his Humvee in Baghdad. Cournoyer knew he wanted to join the military when, as a little boy, a soldier saluted him at the Belknap Mall.
Cournoyer is buried in Laconia, where his family will gather to remember him. “I tried to keep him from going into the service,” his mother, Lenda, said. “Like most, he was going there to keep us safe here.”
Russell Durgin’s family will be at the unveiling. The Henniker resident was killed 26 days after Cournoyer, when his unit took smalls arms fire in Afghanistan. His mother Jean Durgin helped raise funds for the memorial. She appreciates this effort.
“It isn’t that seeing his name on another piece of stone or seeing another posting of his face makes a difference to me,” Jean wrote in an email. “It is more what is behind those efforts. Someone cares that he gave his life.”
So let’s listen to Jean Durgin. See the faces on this page. Read the names on the granite.
And remember why you’re doing it in the first place.