A visit to the War Memorial

I greatly appreciate everyone who has been here even though I was too sick to visit or post.

It's obvious I have made no art to speak of since I got sick.  However, I have a few things I've not shown from my blog when the youngsters were in Wichita last summer.  For those of you who are new to my blog, I had a friend who died of cancer nearly three years ago.  She left her three children in my care until her sister could fly in from California to bury her sister and take charge of the children, who she later adopted.

The children have visited me for the past two summers, and I am always on the lookout for free (or really inexpensive) and educational things to do with them.  I couldn't believe it when they got excited about visiting the Wichita War Memorial.  I thought it would be the last thing they would want to see, but I was thrilled when they got excited about going.

There are more than a dozen memorials, from the Revolutionary War all the way up to Iraqi Freedom.  The one above is the WWII Memorial.  I was surprised how many people were in the park that day, many with their children.  Even though it was a week day, it appears people bring their children here for either vacation or on their days off.

We sidestepped the WWII memorial and went directly to the Operation Freedom Memorial.

I got a little carried away with this statue.

I found it mesmerizing.

I wanted to get every part of it.

It's part of the Operation Freedom Memorial.  This memorial honors those service members who fell at the hands of terrorism.  It was dedicated in 2014. These thick, shiny, black granite walls list the names of all of the Kansas servicemen and women who died in conflicts related to the war on terrorism.

There are several Operations that were included in Operation Freedom.

Poignant and relevant, but incredibly difficult to photograph

because there were other people and the youngsters I didn't want to include in the photos.  You can read about the Walls of Honor above.

More Operations under the Operation Freedom umbrella.

These bricks can be purchased.  They are part of the Veterans Memorial Walkway.  The Veteran's name, rank, branch of service, and service dates are added to each stone purchased.

This tells the story of the statue.  It's a memorial known as the "soldier's cross."  It represents a fallen or missing soldier and:

consists of a soldier's boots, bayonet, helmet, rifle, and sometimes dog tags.

This  bench represents the Prisoners Of War and those Missing In Action.

This was just the first of the memorials.  I'll show more later.

Thank you beyond belief for visiting today.  I'll be by to visit you soon.  Right now, I'm trying to get my strength back.  It took every ounce of energy I had to get this completed.  Unfortunately, it's time to climb back into bed.