Blanding City Veterans Memorial - Phase I complete

Since 2001 the Blanding community has lost four young men to combat deaths; a Marine, a Special Forces Soldier, a National Guardsman and a Navy Seal.
The community is home to the 118th Engineer Company of the Utah Army National Guard. Blanding has always stepped up to serve in our Armed Forces, and at the end of periods of conflict, traditional memorials have been erected by our citizens honoring their sacrifice and service.
As City leaders discussed plans for a future memorial honoring area veterans, they chose to build upon a traditional monument of stone statues, plaques and walls and include a new non-traditional approach to their memorial.
The Blanding Veterans Memorial website honors all servicemen and service women with ties to San Juan County, UT. This virtual memorial has been created with assistance of Together We Served.
Created by and for service members, Together We Served (TWS) is the largest exclusively military online community for U.S. veterans to reconnect with lost comrades and record their service as a lasting legacy.
Since its launch as a Marine Corps website in 2003, Together We Served has expanded to include profiles of all five military branches, including U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.
Service members can create and share a visual history of their service from boot camp to retirement, including duty stations, battles, operations, medal ribbons (arranged as-worn), badges, photos, stories about their service, and memories of fellow service members.
As a searchable military locater, TWS is reconnecting veterans, some who have not seen each other in more than 40 years. With 1.2 million members, Together We Served has reconnected more servicemen and women than any other comparable website.
The Blanding Memorial is a public, virtual memorial containing detailed “Remembrance Profiles” of more than 800 residents of San Juan County, UT who served as soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen and coastguardsmen defending our country in past wars and peacetime. The online memorial will be accessible beginning November 12, 2012, Veterans Day, through the City’s website http://www.blanding-ut.gov .
The site includes memorials created for veterans from the Mormon Battalion through those currently serving in our Nation’s conflicts. It is calculated that the Memorial is about 95 percent complete for veterans of the First and Second World Wars.
While launched by the City, these memorials may be managed by the individual veteran, by families of veterans, or by designated historians. The public may also contribute details about individual veterans – including pictures.
The second phase of the Veterans Memorial project will be a more traditional memorial, physically located adjacent to the City’s Visitor Center and scheduled for dedication by Memorial Day 2013.
The physical memorial will honor individual combat deaths, others who have died while in service, those who have been POW’s and those wounded in service. The memorial will not be static and will be able to be added to.
Blanding is proud of all those who have served our country, both from within our community boundaries and those from outside our area. They are grateful for the sacrifices made by each and are honored to acknowledge each of them through these memorials.
For further information on how you can donate to the memorial, please contact the City of Blanding at 435-678-2791.

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