Bear Creek veterans to be honored

BEAR CREEK - A $7,500 grant from the Resource Conservation and Development Council has helped make the Town of Bear Creek’s first monument honoring veterans a reality, with a dedication ceremony being planned for Veterans Day, Wednesday, Nov. 11.
Veterans from all branches of service are invited to be honored guests and join local and state officials at the 10 a.m. ceremony, which will unveil and dedicate the new monument at the town park located between Main Street and Highway 13, event organizers said.
Veterans who can attend need to contact Police Chief Eddie Collins - a fellow veteran, as well as one of the event organizers - at (205) 486-4707, as soon as possible, so organizers will know how many to expect that day.
The $7,500 RC&D grant will be used to fund the granite memorial, which will have the names of all branches of service inscribed on it and will be placed beside the current flag pole at the park,  Mayor Rob Taylor said.
The grant will also fund two reflection benches to be placed on the decorative stone work, which has already been installed at the flag pole, city officials added.
Flag poles bearing flags of each branch of service will be erected at the perimeters of the decorative stone work, thanks to funding provided by the city, Taylor added.
The city will provide costs of flags for each military branch, as well as landscaping for the monument area and paint the present flag pole located in the center of the monument, he continued. 
In all, the town expects to provide a match of at least $7,500 toward the project costs, he said.
“We have already taken up the trees (from the park) to make the memorial the center of the park,” Taylor pointed out. 
Individual names of veterans will not yet be inscribed on the granite, Taylor said.
“The names will be a future segment of the memorial itself,” Taylor explained. “This is not the end. This is just the beginning.
“I didn’t want to start putting names on there and leave somebody out,” Taylor explained. “I want to make sure we have a pretty complete list of names. That will be a future segment of it.”
Taylor and organizers agree the veterans monument project is long overdue.
“It should have been done years and years ago,” said Taylor. “I don’t know of a town anywhere around that doesn’t have one.
“We’re hoping to get veterans from each branch of service,” Taylor added. “Any veteran, anywhere around, any service, this will be to honor you and everyone who can will show up.”
The idea of the town’s first monument honoring veterans began about two years ago, with Collins seeking grants to help fund the project, Collins said.
“We started pouring the concrete back during the summer and now we’re getting the monuments done and the two reflection benches and six flag poles. We will have a flag pole with every service. We have Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and Space Force now.
Collins is a Navy veteran who served during Desert Storm, Desert Shield and other operations thereafter, he said.
“We wanted to do something for the community that would touch everybody, not just one group of people,” Collins pointed out. “I think this is the greatest country in the world and without veterans, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”
Collins urges all veterans in Bear Creek and the surrounding area to reach out to him in the coming weeks, so an accurate count can be achieved for the ceremony.
“I am going to have a person from each of those services raise their flag,” Collins noted. “We have a veteran whose son is in the Space Force, so he is going to raise the flag for his son’s service.”
Collins hopes the monument will not only honor veterans, but hopefully motivate younger people to be in the military.