VFW Sponsors Bates County Veterans Memorial

By DON ARNDT

The local VFW Post 1935 is sponsoring the construction of a brand new Veterans Memorial located in Adrian. A four man committee has been formed to see this project to completion. Committee members include: Steve Hubbard, 660-679-7619; Don Arndt, 816-898-2359; Bob Moles, 816-297-4347; and Larry Bunch, 816-297-4368.
This memorial will be for any U.S. Veteran, no matter when or where he/she wore the uniform. The committee decided to keep the cost of each brick at a low price of $50.00 each so that most Veterans names can be engraved on bricks and permanently displayed. We are very proud to have set aside a special area at the Memorial assigned strictly for POW, MIA and KIA service men’s bricks. Construction has already begun with a lot of support from many local people and company’s. The first pour of concrete was 21 yards or 1700 square feet.
We are not restricting this to Bates county veterans. We have already sold bricks that will hold the names of KIA friends of local veterans; some are even grandfathers from other states.
There are several places you can purchase a brick. Any of the three locations of The Adrian Bank, The Adrian Chamber of Chamber office at American National Insurance in Adrian, Kasper Auto Parts in Drexel, any of the four committee members mentioned earlier or most any VFW member. We are asking everyone that has a Veteran in the family to search one of us out and buy that Veteran a brick. There is just no way we can find all of these heroes without everyone’s help.
There are many deceased Veterans from the area that have no family left to take care of this for them. There are also Veterans that simply do not have funds available to purchase a brick. Eventually, we would like to have every vet in Bates County represented in this permanent Memorial. If anyone knows of such a case, turn the information in to us and sometime in the future, as funds are donated and collected, we will add those names.
Please drive by this project, watch our progress and buy those Veterans bricks. Those brick sales and other donations are how we are funding this wonderful Memorial.
If you are so moved to make a financial donation to this project, please mail it to Larry Bunch, Veterans Memorial Fund, Route 1 Box 330, Adrian, MO 64720.