MINUTES for 2019-05-28 FINAL - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

Veterans Advisory Committee Minutes May 28,2019 Page 14 son, but if there's moisture in the air it is hot! But they keep going. They laugh, they joke, they have a good time with it. Chair Doolittle: There's got to be 10,000 to 12,000 heasdstones up there. Wery: That's quite a lot of headstones up there. Cemetery two they told us there 8,000 up there. They do it because they want to, it's their way of giving back. Chair Doolittle: Well the recognition is well deserved. Report on Cemeteries Nothing to report. ANNOUNCEMENTS Wery: Korean War Veterans, 22nd of June were going to have a dedication of our memorial. It's been going on about 10 years. Finally got the thing just about finished. It's a 16 square foot slab, like a step pyramid, the second slab is a six square foot slab. In order to be compliant with ADA we had to keep the top of the thing no higher than six feet or else we got to put a fence around it and everything else. What they did with the second slab its all angled out, we didn't have to put the ramps. We had to build the platform up so that from the parking lot to the platform you didn't have a steep drop because of wheelchairs. On top of that we have a pedestal, the pedestal is about four feet high. There will be three plaques up there, the first plaque will face mauka, bronze plaques and it will have all the names of the K.I.A.s„ 52 KIAs. We found out through research that there aare five names at cemetery number one don't belong up there. They didn't die in Korea. One of them were from Massachusetts. He's logged in the national site as from Massachusetts and he's recognized in Massachusetts. We found other who had died and weren't even on there. There were five that were non-hostile action, one was accidental discharge of a weapon, one was accidental discharge of a grnade, it could be anything, so we made a small plaque on one side to recognize the non-hostiles. We made another small plaque on the other side to recognize the contributors. The Hakalau Lions Club provided all the ground labor. The guy that was leading it, was a former contractor, Bob, he basically ran it. Then Isemoto came in and laid all the forms and then came back the next week and poured it. The guy that was running it went down to Home Depot to get all the materials to build the form and while he was there, the guy that was helping him, asked what it was for, he said were building a memorial for the Korean War Veterans. He was the District Manager from the mainland, he said they'll donate all the material to them. We decided to face it with, if you take the lava rock and you slice it, like a facia, like tile but thicker, you use it like you would tile,just use cement. We had, selling candy, acquired about$55,000 over the years to pay for this, assuming it would cost a tremendous amount of money and it hasn't. So far, we spent about $7,000. We got a lot of free labor, free things. We went through Dodo Mortuary to find a company to make the plaques but they would not do it through a private organization, they would only do it through Dodo. They know they're all going to see us at some point in time, so they did it no cost to us.