He also remembers what he felt like when he came back in 1969. Nobody was much interested in what he’d gone through.
Since then, he and a few buddies have devoted much of their lives to helping Michigan veterans get their lives together.
Paul’s also a history buff, and knows that Michigan has more than done its part in America’s wars. Not just in the young men it sent to the battlefields. During World War II, Detroit was called the Arsenal of Democracy for a good reason.
Michigan was the number one state in war production, most of it in and around Detroit. These days, the ranks of the World War II vets are dwindling. New veterans are taking their place, from Desert Storm and Afghanistan and the current Iraq war.
The World War II and Korean vets didn’t do much to reach out to those who served in Vietnam. That made a powerful impression on Paul, who told me that his generation is determined that never again will veterans of one conflict turn away from other veterans.
Especially that is, on a day like Memorial Day. And Paul and some of his buddies have been working for years to create a park that would commemorate all Michigan veterans of every war this nation has ever fought, an Arsenal of Democracy park.
They have a tax-approved non-profit corporation and a plan. Thirty years ago, they bought an abandoned restaurant on Woodward Avenue. They took baseball bats and drove off the junkies and fixed it up. Officially, it is the headquarters of Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter Nine. But they reach out to all veterans, and for all these years, they have watched over a vacant one-acre lot next to it. They want to build their park there.
They aren’t looking for money from the city; they intend to raise it themselves. They’ve had a first-rate architect draw up plans for a park that would considerably beautify the area. There would be a plaza and flagpoles, trees and a sculpture.
Soothing water would run along a stone wall. Panels would commemorate all of America‘s wars, and ivy and screens would hide some of the blight in the background, and the immortal words from the Gettysburg address would be displayed in stainless steel.
They think they can get it done if they can just get permission from Detroit. They were told they were about to -- but then their paperwork disappeared, and the Kilpatrick administration began allowing a private operator to use the land as a parking lot.
The veterans are hoping for better luck from Detroit’s new mayor. Something like a million men from this state have put their lives on the line since Michigan first formed companies just a few blocks down Woodward to march off to the Civil War. Seems to me our veterans have more than earned the right to build a one-acre park for themselves, and for all of us.
Comments