Since ASU's inception in 1885, 129 Sun Devils have died in active duty, and ASU’s Veterans Chapter of the ASU Alumni Association is seeking to build a memorial to honor their lives.
The Memorial has a started Pitchfunder page with a goal of $12,000 for the meantime, which will only get it part of the way to the $50,000 it needs. The minimum donation amount is only $5 and anyone can contribute.
Joanna Sweatt, Marine Corps service member from 1998-2007 and ASU Veterans Chapter president is working on the fundraising efforts and hopes the memorial will open by April 2016.
“It furthers the message that ASU is a premiere university to support vets. ASU has done a phenomenal job in making sure that we are doing what is best for these people,” she said. “Pat Tillman has been our symbol, but he is not the only one, it is important to recognize everyone.”
One hundred and twenty-eight men and one woman will be memorialized on the marble wall that will hang on an empty wall of the lower level of the Memorial Union. The names will be on tiles that will be fixed to the structure and then lit; only the veterans will be lit as no donor names will be listed on the memorial.
The memorial plans have been in the works for three years now. Sweatt and her team, Jim Geiser, who is the Veterans Chapter secretary, and Padraic Earl, who is a chapter board member, are all veterans with their own special reasons for supporting the memorial.
“It’s just as simple as commemorating everyone we have lost," Sweatt said. "That’s a tragedy when we lose one of our service members, that is somebody’s child, brother, mother, father sister, friend. … We forget all those that we lose, unless they happen to be famous like Pat Tillman, the memorial will honor all those families and what they have lost.”
Geiser, who researched all of the fallen Sun Devils and created the official list, stressed that the memorial and the team are not putting the importance in the deaths of those who served but rather putting value in the life that was lost.
He used the Find A Grave website to track down the Sun Devils. Geiser said the previous list that was kept by the ASU Symphonic Carillon, which is the organization that plays the bells from the MU, had names of veterans who are still alive and names of people who had never served.
“I know a couple of the people on the list," he said. "What is happening to these people is that they are getting forgotten. Hardly anybody knows them or knows their names. ”
Reach the reporter at cmclevel@asu.edu.
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