From vets to moms, Iraq war leaves mark on town

December 21, 2011|Sharon Cohen, AP National Writer

In a quiet park on the eastern edge of this auto manufacturing town, a gleaming ring of black granite walls and monuments stand in solemn tribute to the war dead. Hundreds of names are etched in stone, many of them long forgotten to history.

Not so the six newest additions: Brian M. Clemens. Robert L. McKinley. James E. Swain. Rickey E. Jones. Nathan J. Frigo. David N. Simmons.

Their smiles, their voices, their Little League games, their yearbook photos are fresh memories here to friends and family. Now the six — all of whom died in the Iraq war — are honored next to the walls on a granite monument inscribed with the words “Global War on Terror.’’

This town of 45,000 is known for embracing the military, whether it’s memorializing its fallen heroes in the middle of the war, stretching Veterans Day into an eight-day tribute or flying POW-MIA flags outside the schools.

But now, in the wake of the departure of the last U.S. troops from Iraq, Kokomo joins hundreds of smaller towns across the nation that will be wrestling with the legacy of a nearly nine-year war that claimed nearly 4,500 American lives, wounded tens of thousands, and became one of the most politically divisive conflicts in U.S. history.

More than 1.5 million Americans served in a war that introduced the nation to new battlefields (Ramadi, Fallujah, Nasiriyah) and IEDs (improvised explosive devices), a conflict that lasted so long some soldiers at the end were elementary school students at the beginning.

In Kokomo — a town where the names of the war dead in Iraq and Afghanistan were read aloud last Veterans Day — there will be reverberations for years to come, from the churches and colleges to grieving mothers and a new generation of vets nervous about the troubled economy.

“What I worry about is once Americans forget about the war, they’re going to forget about the people who fought the war,’’ says Jason Vazquez, a 28-year-old Navy veteran of two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. “I never really understood it from the Vietnam guys but I can see it now: For the troops … the war is really never over.’’

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Howard County is dotted with memorials remembering veterans whose service spans three centuries.

They’re stone and brass, grand and modest, indoor and outdoor. They commemorate the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. And a group of vets hopes to add to that: It’s trying to raise more than $300,000 for a new memorial honoring military families.

There are individual tributes, too. After James Swain, a 2002 Kokomo High School graduate, honors student and statistician for the girls basketball team, was killed in Fallujah at the age of 20, a scholarship was established in his name.