National Touring Memorial On Display Downtown This Holiday Weekend.

By Jeremy Coumbes on August 27, 2019 at 5:55pm

Remembering Our Fallen is a tribute to those service members who have lost their lives since September 11th, 2001, in Iraq and Afghanistan during the War on Terror.

The memorial also includes a tribute to those service members who lost their lives in training accidents and attacks, and of those due to suicide from post traumatic stress.

AMVETS Post 100 Commander Jimmy Duncan talks about the memorial

“It’s got over 5000 photos on it and I believe 36 towers, or pillars with the pictures around them. And it’s pretty moving, it’s very moving in fact. We are going to have a lot of activities going on up there, and we are getting tremendous community support, and we hope we can get a lot of people to come out.”

The memorial which was unveiled nationally on the steps of Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on September 7th of 2017, will be on display on the downtown square this Thursday through the Labor Day holiday on Monday.

Both military and personal photos of the fallen are included in the memorial, which are provided by the military member’s family.

Organizers are still asking for help in contacting Gold Star families in order to include every single service member who has died since 9/11.

“We’ve reached out to the Gold Star families that we know of, and there will be some there, and there is usually one or two families that travel with the memorial. I know it’s a tough go for them. For some it could be their only child they lost, it could be, anything really. It’s important to them , and we don’t want them to think that people have forgotten, because we haven’t forgotten. Here in the mid-west we are blessed people care, they are very patriotic, honest, hard working and all the best character traits of America right here. And we are going to see an outpouring of that this next coming week. And I think I’m going to be very proud of our community and our area by the time this is done.”

The event this weekend includes much more than just viewing the memorial.

“We have some educational days coming up which we’ve worked out with the school districts to bring the grade school kids essentially up here to take a look at it at different times. While that’s going on, we will be demonstrating the proper way to fold a flag, and what each fold of the flag means. There’s 13 folds and each fold has a meaning, and we will have that going on during those times.”

The event starts off with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday at 10:00 am, with a wreath laying Thursday evening at 6:00 pm.

The Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce will hold a business after hours at the AMVETS Friday evening at 5.

A concert and candle light vigil will be held Saturday evening. Sunday morning a worship service will be held and luminaries will light up the memorial Sunday evening.

For more information on the event, contact Jimmy Duncan at the AMVETS at 217-243-9990

Gold Star families wishing to have their service member included in the memorial should go to the website at www.PatrioticProductions.org