[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Monument Matters, a podcast produced by the Monument Builders of North America for all things memorialization.
Each episode is an extension of our monthly magazine, MB News.
Monument Matters invites everyone to listen and share. You'll find all of the episodes on Apple, Spotify and YouTube.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: I'm your host, Mike John, CM, AICA from the Johns Carabelli Company, Semirano Monuments and Flowers including Cleveland, Ohio. I'm also a past president of the Monument Builders of North America.
Today and in the October edition of MB News, we will be discussing the battle for a veterans memorial.
With us are today's guests, Kenneth Noon and Aaron Lynn Raider.
Ken is the owner of Summit Memorials, Inc. In Akron, Ohio. And Aaron Lynn Rader is a psychiatric nurse practitioner and researcher who is among the dedicated volunteers who made the Ohio Veterans Memorial park possible.
Aaron and Ken are also co authors of the book 3095 Ohio's the Battle for a Veterans Memorial. Ken and Aaron, welcome to our podcast.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Morning.
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Morning.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: So Ken, please share with us an overview of how the Ohio Veterans Memorial Project came to be and what the status of the project is today.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: Well, that's a. That's a loaded question.
It started back in 2005. I received a phone call just typical day at my shop and a gentleman by the name of Dan De La Rosa called me and informed me that him and a couple of his buddies were thinking about doing a veterans memorial to honor Ohio's Vietnam casualties.
They came across that idea by being down in D.C.
and they decided to look into seeing if there's anything in Ohio that was done.
Unfortunately, there wasn't though. I got the phone call through Dan because he was at the national cemetery out in Rittman and they were looking at monuments and they were writing down the ones they liked and the ones, you know, that caught their interest.
Then when they went to the office, they were given several names of the companies that they've monuments that they liked. And I got a phone call and we talked a little bit and it was a wonderful idea he had. But in my mind I didn't think it would ever transpire into anything because there's a lot involved with it.
And so he asked me to give him some input on what, what could be done.
And I did. I said, okay, I'll get back to you in a couple days or whatever. And when I got back with him, I told him that there's 3,095, which he knew the number, but they had an idea in their head what they wanted.
So I put one panel together with one name on Paper and took to them at one of their meetings, showed them the height of the lettering, how many names I can get on a panel, you know, and it took off from there.
They had a wonderful group of people out in Mansfield. That's where it was originally going to be built.
And I asked him, I told them there was companies out that way. Maybe it would be better for them to hook up with somebody more local.
And they decided to go with my company.
We put a bid in.
Unfortunately, I was the lowest bid.
What's that?
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that works.
[00:04:03] Speaker C: Well, I got. I got really interested in. Once I. I mean, I was in the service. I thank God. Peacetime and being in the monument industry, you know, I always thought it would be really cool to do something really, really unique and special, you know, to kind of put your mark on. On the planet. And so that was. That's where I got involved.
It was a 20 year labor of love.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: So where does the project stand right this minute?
[00:04:39] Speaker C: Well, it's.
It, like I said, it took like 17 years to get to where we're at now. Or they're on their 20th anniversary this year.
I just placed the six monuments for each branch of the service.
We just did that this spring.
The final piece of the memorial was a Huey helicopter.
Dan de la Rosa's brother, who lost his life in the helicopter, is the centerpiece of what this memorial was to be about.
But then it morphed into much more than just that.
It's.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Talk about the monuments that are there. The wall.
[00:05:21] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, there's like, there's 3,095 names on the main wall. There's monuments honoring the 13 or the youngest marine who was killed in Vietnam.
There's monuments for the Tuskegee Airmen.
Rocky Blier. There's a monument honoring Rocky Blier Tillman. There's a monument for him. So the memorial started out to be just honoring Ohioans.
The names on the wall are just casualties from Ohio.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Vietnam. Yeah.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: You know, for Vietnam. The back of the memorial, there's two fronts to the memorial. That's what's really unique about this memorial I did there. The Vietnam wall is built on a retaining wall. This is a freestanding monument. There's actually 50 panels that create the monument. And each panel is 8 foot long or 8 inches thick, 6 foot tall, 30 some inches wide. And there's 50 panels that were placed to make the memorial.
And it's all freestanding. I didn't pin anything. I. Everything's just the weight of it. Stone.
Yeah. So it's. There 125ft.
The back we did Iraq, Afghanistan, the young men and women that were killed. And what was kind of unique about that is we invited each family member who lost a young man or woman in Iraq, Afghanistan to come, and they could literally peel the rubber off the panels before I sandblasted their names on it.
The front.
Yeah, the front I did in my shop, you know, I.
My brother in law, my partner, we have two automatic sandblasters. And I. I gave him a warning and told him, Booth 2 is going to be used for nothing but sandblasting panels for all winter.
So we shut down the one sandblast room and utilized that room for nothing but blasting those panels. So we did that all winter long, you know, to.
To create it. But once I did the back, those names were added later.
And so we had. We. I just finished up over 1800 names of the Korean fallen. Their names are on the back. And I spent almost a year blasting those names on the wall by hand.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Yeah, right on site. He built a. Tell them about the thing you had to build.
[00:07:50] Speaker C: Oh, I built it. I built a sandblast booth and put it against.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: On wheels.
[00:07:57] Speaker C: That way I can use aluminum oxide and everything. So I kept everything contained and I even had a torpedo heater blowing heat in there for me in the. In the wintertime as I was blasting the names on it. And I would do like two panels at a time, shift the wall down to the next two panels. And, you know, did it that way.
It was very hard.
My hat's off to final date guys out there.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: I feel your pain for sure.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: But.
[00:08:27] Speaker C: But by. By using the. By building a room and. And sliding it, I was able to.
When I was tired and I just walked away and just let everything in the room. I didn't have to worry about it, you know, shoveling up the abrasive because everything was kept dry. And then the next day, start again.
But.
But I never thought really in the big scheme of things that this memorial would ever take place because of the fact that what was involved, they had. It was originally going to be in Mansfield at the reformatory, right? Yeah, that's where. Yeah, yeah, that's where they were. That's. Man. The city of Mansfield had property there that they were looking at letting them build a memorial adjacent to it. Right. But. But everybody had to have. Every town, every.
That offered land, required perpetual care money.
And so it was based on the value of the memorial.
I didn't put the value of the memorial. They. The organization, they. They estimated the memorial to be $1.7 million, which didn't come close to being that. But now it would have been if they would have put it on public property, because then they have zonings and everything. But where the memorial's at, it's on cemetery grounds.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Well, I'm really glad to hear that they ended up in Rittman and not at the reformatory that you seem to.
[00:09:58] Speaker C: Oh, it didn't go to Rittman.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: I'm sorry.
[00:10:01] Speaker C: No, no, no. Yeah, it went to. It went to Clinton, a little town in Clinton.
We had the group.
I'll tell you the reason how it ended up there. Mansfield. And everybody wanted a lot of money for perpetual care.
The group had to raise 350,000 before they can even break ground.
And that was based on what they estimated the cost of the memorial to be.
So it was basically a brick wall. For three years, we were going to towns and giving presentations on what the memorial would look like.
I did, like, four or five different models each. Each time we had a property, a different location, I had to show what that memorial would look like on that grounds.
So I constantly was doing models for these guys.
And unfortunately, I did all that, you know, at no cost. But that was my passion for what was taking place, because the guys had. There were wonderful, weak men. They had a. They had a dream, and. And they were hoping to fulfill it.
But their last location that they had, the city council approved of them giving them land.
But the law director got involved, and then there was some political stuff that took place, so they gave up. They were done. This memorial would not have been built.
The cemetery in Clinton, Ohio, caught wind of it and said they had 15 acres of land and they would allow us to build a memorial on around two acres of it.
So I told the guys, I said, this will be perfect for you guys. You won't have to. We don't have to pull permits, get city, you know, because it's on cemetery grounds.
You know, we can go and do what we want as long as we did it with their, you know, approval. And so everything, like the wall itself, the foundation for. It's seven feet deep, three quarter inch rebar. I mean, it. We went overboard. And everything was done through volunteers and donations. Donations.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: No government funding at all.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: So. So, Aaron, what was for. You've been involved, obviously, for a long time. Well, I'm sorry.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: About three years.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Yeah, years.
So only three of the.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Oh, right, right.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Okay. So you're a newbie to this.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: I'm a newbie compared to him.
[00:12:33] Speaker C: Got it.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: So I'm really curious though and maybe Aaron can answer this. Maybe you have to go back. Kent, what was the tipping point? What. What was the thing that happened that actually turned this from nothing into you. It's actually going to happen.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: You just explained it. Go ahead and tell them.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Well, there's a cemetery coming forward.
[00:12:53] Speaker C: Yeah, it was a cemetery. See the cemetery. Once the cemetery waved, the cemetery told us we didn't need to. They didn't want perpetual care money because it's going to be on their ground. It's going to be the centerpiece of their ground or summit future cemetery, which they are. They started bearing here in 2017.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: They had a cemetery across the street yet full. Right, right.
[00:13:17] Speaker C: And now that cemetery is full. They only have single graves.
So now they're burying over there. But they. What, what made it happen was the cemetery giving up the 2, 350,000 perpetual care fund once that took place. And then we. We've dedicated the land. In February, February 3rd of 070709, we unveiled the wall.
So within a year and a half we were able to raise the money to get the main wall put up. So.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Right. And they built.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: I'm sorry, I was just going to say kudos to the cemetery because not only did they. No kidding, petrol care money, right. They gave up all that property.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Do you understand?
Would be $2.2 million.
[00:14:10] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, they gave and it was. But you got to understand, we the OVMP people back then, once we hooked up with this Clinton cemetery, we gave them, we did a lot for the cemetery as well. We put in the main road coming in.
We put up a beautiful information building.
It's a memorial in itself. I designed a soldiers cross in the ceiling and there's over 32,000 dog tags hung representing Ohio's fallen from World War II to present.
So we, we gave a lot. The OVMP did a lot for the cemetery as well. It was a wonderful mutual agreement.
The board, now, the people now are. There's little problems going on right now, but that's like anything people, new people come in, but it gets interesting.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Yeah. The thing is that one of the reasons they would bring people to the property and try to get people to envision what was going to be there. And Ken had this brainstorm of building a wooden wall. So tell them about the wooden.
[00:15:28] Speaker C: Yeah, well, before the elder wall was, you know, it was a. It was a big field, you know, used to be a farm field and everything. And so nobody really understood the length of it. So me And a buddy of mine, we decided to go buy some treated lumber and we built 125 foot wall right where the memorial was going to be.
And I put lest we forget and gold vinyl. People literally came out with and signed in memory or honor of a soldier that they lost.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:07] Speaker C: When we dedicated the land, there was probably over 3,000 people there just for a wooden wall.
And it was. So it was pretty interesting.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And Ken made the comment.
Yeah, he made the comment to me that it was very hard to take that wooden wall down.
[00:16:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: All those remembrances on because there was nowhere to store it. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:31] Speaker C: But there's a lot of unique stuff about the memorial.
There's, of course there's added a 3095 on the wall. One of them is a female, Sharon Lane. She was one of eight nurses killed in Vietnam.
So her name's on the wall and it's done alphabetically. I put all the names alphabetically and her name falls almost dead center of the wall.
But in front of the wall there's a granite statue that I did for gold star mothers.
And her name is almost dead center to that statue. So it's really neat thing. Her mother was there to unveil the wall, that gold star mother statue.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:16] Speaker C: And I did a, what people are saying is the first and only gold star father statue on the backside of the wall facing the gold star mother. I did a gold, gold star father statue honoring the fathers of gold stars.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Yeah. They're almost nine feet tall.
Yeah. And then he did your. What are the other monuments you did?
[00:17:40] Speaker C: Well, the, there's the Purple Heart. Yeah. There's a Purple Heart memorial I designed. It's a unique, one of a kind Purple Heart memorial. And there's a national Purple Heart monument. Everybody knows, but I designed a Purple Heart memorial for a lady who donated money to the park. But she, she asked me, she goes, you do some unique work and we can you design something different that's not standard to the Purple Heart but yet ties in with everything. So, you know, and the lady, one lady, she, she commented on, on the emblem, which is George Washington. And the lady goes, that looks awful a lot. Looks awful a lot like George Washington. She thought it was, she thought it.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: Was one of the gold. Yeah. The, the purple star.
[00:18:31] Speaker C: So that made me feel good.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I'm glad it does.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: And then talk about POW pond.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: Yeah. And then there's the POW MIA reflecting pond. And it's probably the largest POWmia reflecting pond in Ohio.
And I duplicated or the wall in D.C. with granite. Yeah, with granite. And it's got a backdrop and it's.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Got a waterfall down to it. It's just beautiful.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: So.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's Medal of Honor.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: It sounds amazing. I'm definitely going to have to get over there and.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Yes, you will check it out. But.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: So, Aaron. Okay, so we've covered the fact that you're kind of new to the project. How did you get involved?
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Well, I began. I moved back to Barberton, which is close to Clinton, five years ago, and I retired as nurse practitioner, as you mentioned. And I was taking care of my husband, who was an invalid, and looking for volunteer work.
I don't come from a family of a lot of veterans. A couple of my uncles were in the service, but my dad was too young for World War II and, you know, so he wasn't in, in that. But I, somebody had mentioned the, the Veterans Memorial park. And I went down and I was astounded.
My gosh. And started volunteering down there. I was watering flowers. That was my first big job.
And pretty soon I'm down there about a year helping with events and things because there's still fundraising to finish the park and, you know, maintain it.
And then I joined the board.
So I was on the board for about a year, until February.
Ken can tell you when I first got the idea for the book. So why don't you tell them that?
[00:20:24] Speaker C: Well, she, I was notified by, I was, I left the, the board, oh, about six years ago because I had family issues. My, you know, my, I'm at the age where your parents are passing. But anyway, so I resigned from the board. And she was on the board and she wanted to do grant writing and since she did it for the hospital.
And one of the board member said, well, you need to talk to Ken. He knows, he's been with it from day one.
And so we got together. It was the first time I met her and she was asking about grant writing and I kind of chuckled and I said, well, you're not going to get any grants because we're sitting on more money than most grant people have, you know, that are offering it. So it's really going to be hard to you. And we talked and she was asking questions and, and just jokingly, I, I told her, I said, well, that's just chapter one. And then I left.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: You know, he planted a seed.
Yeah.
[00:21:27] Speaker C: And so she, a couple days, week later, she called me. She goes, hey, what'd you mean by that chapter? That's the first chapter. And I Said, well, there's a lot of stories. There's a lot of stories. There's a lot of good, there's a lot of bad. There's a lot of. You know, everybody had good hearts and everybody tried, but it's like anything, you know, something this big. And when you have a group of people who are just passionate about doing something and have no experience in it, they. They tended to lean towards me for information and because I've done other memorials in that.
And the past board, original board members, they at. When I was at. I would go to their meetings once they chose my company just to fill them in on, you know, you don't want to do that. And then they asked me to join the board, and I told them, I said, you know, there could be some conflict of interest there.
So I told them I would talk to my attorney and which I did. And I came back and I said, listen, I'm hesitant of doing this, but I want to see this done and help you guys so I can be on your board, but I can't have anything to do when it comes to granite or even paying me for my work.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: You couldn't vote on any of that?
[00:22:48] Speaker C: I couldn't, yeah. So, yeah. But I did it because they needed a lot of guidance.
I'm not saying I'm a engineer or an art, but I do know granite and I do know how to work with it.
And so it became a labor. Labor of love and obsession. Yeah.
Yeah. And it was hard. It was hard to walk away, you know, but people ask me why, you know, because every. We all have contracts with people and it's half down, balance upon completion. I don't know, you know, how many companies would say, you know, okay, you only have quarter of the money.
You know, I'll go ahead and order the grant.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: That's what he did.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: But there was. There was some issues. There was some grant money that was supposedly coming in, and since I couldn't vote on anything, I got. I got into a pickle. And the pickle was that I built. I put up the granite wall, and the following month, I was told by, you know, a board member, since the wall's up, nobody's going to donate to it. So you need to go ahead and write it off.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Just eat it.
[00:24:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
So it was over 300 and some thousand dollars.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: So he had to stay, make sure he got paid.
[00:24:10] Speaker C: So that was her way of making me stay.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
So what happened then with me is while I was on the board and this was last year, and I had had lunch with Ken. I had gotten this idea. He. He was mowing. He still mows, like, the surrounding area for the cemetery. And I would stop him and ask him questions, and he would tell me stories, and it just took off because there are so many good stories, even the story he was just telling you about, about the issues that he went through and trying to work with, you know, the board, the community, those types of things.
And we just laid it all out in the book, the good and the bad.
Far more good than bad, of course, and ending up with an absolutely beautiful monument. And I tried then to. Ken steered me into who I should talk to, because he's been involved from the inception. And he said, talk to Dan de la Rosa, the guy whose brother died in the helicopter, initially. Now, Dan hasn't been involved in 18 years, but we found him, you know, and then I started to write all these stories out because I really felt that just a story about, you know, this monument went up, and then this one and then this one. Really doesn't connect you to the purpose of doing it. Yeah. And I started to talk to the actual family members. I've talked to several Gold Star family members and got permission to write their stories out to really connect the stories to the granite.
So people have an understanding of how important memorials are.
And I know that's how you feel as far as, especially military memorials become very important significance to our communities. And we're finding that very small communities are now putting up memorials in their towns, and Ken has been a part of a lot of those.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: That's amazing.
A project like this with so many different layers and levels and hurdles.
How many times did you think, could I turn back the clock and say no?
Did it ever occur to you, every.
[00:26:45] Speaker C: Every day for 19 years.
I. I tell you, it. There was.
I met some wonderful, great people during this memorial. I mean, lost and watched a lot of them leave this earth.
Some really, really good people have put their blood and tears into the memorial.
They gave me the canvas, and they gave me the ability to do. Do something that can make you proud as a monument builder.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: And made his dad very proud of him.
[00:27:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. He came.
[00:27:25] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: His family came.
[00:27:27] Speaker C: Yeah. I came from a family. When you come in second, you're first. Loser.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: I get that. Yep.
[00:27:33] Speaker C: You know, and my dad was a great man.
He didn't serve. He was the only child. My grandfather served in World War II.
And the day that we unveiled the memorial, my parents were here. There was well over 6,000 people at the Dedication, huge. And when it was all over, my dad, he was down by the wall, and I asked my mom what he was, you know, what's dad doing? And my dad didn't. He never shed a tear in his life.
And he was down there crying, so.
And I went down, talked to him, and. And he said his dad was proud of him. So that's what made this memorial special to me. Because really, you know, it's kind of weird, you know, you're. You're in your 50s and you're. You're still looking for that, you know, that a boy thing from your, you know, know, from your parents.
You know, of all the. Of all the hard hardships, the lawsuits.
I mean, I was. I was. I was accused of forgery. I was, you know, it was.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: It.
[00:28:42] Speaker C: It was simply.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Chapter four.
[00:28:45] Speaker C: Simply amazing.
Simply amazing.
People act like, why, you know, you're building a memorial? You're. You know, that you're making all this money. Why, you know, it's like, it's. It's one thing if you get paid half down in a balance upon completion. Everybody. I mean, we're all in business to make money.
But it was weird to hear people say, and they still do, you know, oh, you just. You just lined your pockets. You just lined your pockets with money. I'm thinking when you have someone build your house, you got to pay the person. But there's. That's what, that's the part that really struck me to be odd is, you know, that part of it. And like, I told one person, I said, you know, if. If I borrow. If you borrowed 100 bucks from me and I. And then paid me back 50 cents here, a dollar here for the next five years. Yeah, I got my money back, but not. Not that $100 that I handed you.
So I had. I had some financial issues.
You know, I got a partner, and I, Like I said, I put myself in a pickle, but it. I was able to survive it.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I want him to tell you about the benches, because this was a genius idea he came up with for them to be able to pay him back.
[00:30:06] Speaker C: Tell him, yeah, they, they. They didn't have any ideas on fundraising and that, and. And I'm pretty good at stuff like that. And I told him, I said, well, we can put these granite benches around the memorial. And I counted. There was.
Right now, there's over 100 and 105, I think, right now. And they're park. Granite park benches. And so I told him, I said, you know, we can sell the. If you keep the price at a decent price that we're, that mom and dad can afford to do a bench honoring their son and that you'll.
My theory is, and I know a lot of monument people out there are going to be mad about this, but I'd rather do 2 to 1, especially in a project like this, that way more people can be involved.
We were selling these benches for 3500 bucks, granite benches.
And that's really reasonable decorating.
Down in Columbus, they did, they were selling them. They were 10,000 bucks for one, but they only needed 10 of them. You know, I wanted, I wanted people, I wanted, you know, anybody to be able to do a bench.
So, but that's how I got, was able to re. Get them to pay their bill to me was I charged them twelve hundred dollars for the bench basically cost and they would get turn around and then eventually take the remaining and pay it back to me for, you know, for the work done.
So, you know, it was an interesting way of doing it.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: Yeah. But it's creative, generous and got the job done.
[00:31:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And there was a lot of people that, that said that they would never been able to afford, you know, these benches. And now there's companies out there that I'm not doing the benches anymore because there's some issues going on and there's companies out there wanting 6, $7,000 for something that they're trying to sell for 3,500. And I kept the price the same for the since 2008.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So until last year when he stopped making them.
[00:32:21] Speaker C: I know it's pretty stupid. So don't do that out there unless you love the project and there you go. And that's. I love the project and it did give me a lot, I got a.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: Lot of work out of it.
[00:32:34] Speaker C: I, I, I've gotten known rather well in Summit counties.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Veterans.
[00:32:42] Speaker C: I've done some beautiful memorials all the way down to Marietta.
I've won national awards for a monument in, for Plain Township in North Canton. So I've, I, it's, it brought me some good work and able to continue to, you know, further my craft as far as helping veterans.
So in a big scheme of things, that paid off.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Yeah, but those are.
[00:33:10] Speaker C: All right.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: No, no, I understand.
You know, there's a whole lot of different ways to define.
Right, right, exactly. It sounds like at the end of the day, this project, as intimidating as it probably was, as frustrating as I'm sure it was, as discouraging as it may have been here or there at the end of the. To be able to look back and reflect on what you've accomplished. And not just what you've accomplished, but what you've provided so that other people can experience it. You know, it's really hard to put a price tag on.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: He said he'd do it again.
He might do a couple things different.
[00:34:01] Speaker C: But I wouldn't. I wouldn't change. I. To be honest with you, I really wouldn't change.
If the situations were the same and I would have said yes to doing it the way I did it. I really would. I mean, for the fact when it's all said and done and it's going to outlast you, it's going to outlast me, you know, and I'm not looking for anything, but all I cared about was letting my dad know, you know, that. That I'm not the bad kid that I used to be.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: We have. We're gonna have to sit down and have a cocktail one of these days because I. Oh, you'll really enjoy shared life experience.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: But we're. We're. Man, there's so many more questions I'd like to ask you, and we're running out of time, but. Yeah, I think one that I'd like to get on. Any advice you would give to others who are looking to do a project with a volunteer board or committee, what kind of advice would you have to those folks?
[00:35:12] Speaker C: Well, I would say try not to get involved.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: Over.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: Overly involved, you mean.
[00:35:20] Speaker C: But you. But you have to, you know, you have to get involved. You can't just let them go, you know, and.
And then come to you and say, here, build this. And especially something of that size and that, you know, magnitude. I mean, I've had. I've done memorials with people had done their little sketches and, oh, this is what I'm looking at doing. And then taking those drawings and then making it actually work, you know, but just.
You can't just say, well, you know, come to me when you have your money, you know, because they'll never get there because they need. People are going to need to be guided and pushed and prodded and, you know, because people just think that they got a great idea and people are just going to give them money for it.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: It's.
[00:36:09] Speaker C: You got to go out. They got to go out and work it. And I went to their council meetings with them as the contractor to build a memorial that gave them a lot of. That gave the city councils that were donating a lot of confidence that you have someone in your organization that can Take the product and do it.
For example, Clinton Cemetery, when they, when they talked to Dan and the committee at the time, they had zero money.
Zero. They had no funding whatsoever. And the Clinton cemetery just went on heartfelt the faith and passion that these guys had and, and committed to do something.
But what they did before they actually committed, called me and had me come and talk to the cemetery council.
And I pretty much had to guarantee that I would see this through because they were afraid that it would go quarter way done and they fall apart.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: So that was my. I had a commitment to the cemetery that, that I would make sure it was seen, you know, done through and through. So if you're going to do a project like this, you have to jump in with both feet. You can't just let say, design it and I'll build it. You have to get involved and, and it's very important to me that you do that.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: A lot of advice in the book too, you know, because a lot of things went awry.
They had a board member who took money, because that happens sometimes in these kinds of volunteer 501C3 type boards. Right. And so there's advice about how to avoid that.
You know, there's all kinds of things that can go wrong and haywire. But if you stick it out, you know, like Ken has done all these years and a lot of people with him, then you can, you'll. Your end product can be just most beautiful monument in our state, I'll tell you that.
[00:38:24] Speaker C: I mean, I mean, I've done monuments that, you know, I designed it for him. You build it, you know, you build it, you walk away. You know, they do all the fundraising. So I mean, most monuments are done, you know, memorials are done that way, you know, but something this big, you need to get involved. You need to put your feet into it. You know, I just did one for the city of Norton, Ohio. You know, it was a wonderful, beautiful memorial. And I didn't, I wasn't involved with it like I am with the Ohio veterans because of the magnitude of that memorial. I designed a Norton one and everybody else's, but then I let them do all the footwork and raising of the money. But something like this, you know, I needed to be a part of, basically because of the cemetery is putting their faith into me and my company. You know, I started my company from zero. I didn't.
Summit Memorials was started in 95 by me, you know, and, you know, so I'm first, you know, first generation. So I don't have. Well, this monument company's been here 100 years, so they're gonna, you know, I had. I had to prove a lot to a lot of people, you know, and.
Yeah.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:46] Speaker C: Well, and, and about the book here, I mean, there's. I've always said that this would be a wonderful story to write because of all the goods and bads, but the way this lady here wrote this book just astounds me. I'm just amazed of how she took all this information because all I did was, you know, my name's on the book, but I just gave her my dirty laundry. I had a laundry basket, a true laundry basket with newspaper article. Newspaper articles, minutes all the way from the day I met Dan de la Rosa.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Well, I wish. I wish we had more time to talk about the book and how it came to be, but we just. Unfortunately, we don't.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Oh, that's okay.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: But at this point, you know, I definitely. Ken and Aaron, I want to thank you both for joining us today.
Audience, Please remember that the October issue of MB News features the article about the Veterans memorial and the resulting book, which is a unique way to document my project.
And as always, if you found this topic interesting, please let us know. I think that more than the October issue of MB News, which features it, I really want to get a hold of the book myself and dive into that because I think there's far more interest there than in MB News. But don't, I mean, don't give up on NB News.
Go get the book, too.
Thanks for listening to monument matters. MBNA invites you to stay connected through Facebook and LinkedIn.
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And short of that, have a great rest of your day. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen to our podcasts. I hope you get something out of it as much as I'm getting out of presenting them to you. So with that, I'm Michael Johns. Thank you, Aaron and Ken for joining us today.
Audience have a great rest of your day.
[00:42:01] Speaker C: Thank you.
