Cody Colt, Yelm’s public works director, is working diligently to secure funding to bring a Veterans Memorial Park into the city in order to honor the area’s veterans who’ve served for the United States of America in a war.
According to Colt, the park would include a reflection walk, which intends to honor and highlight veterans of the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as World War I, World War II and smaller conflicts.
Each war and conflict would feature three pillars, with the center pillar providing a description of the war, how the United States became involved and more. The pillars on the left and right would honor local veterans, prisoners of war missing in action and those killed in action who served in each specific war. Colt said previously he would like to make half the memorial a marble wall and the other half granite.
Colt said within the last two years, the Yelm City Council approved the purchase of a property by Mill Pond, and that the current plan is to build this veterans memorial park there. It would include a walking path, and Colt said the park’s sidewalks would connect to the neighborhood near Ridgeline Middle School.
He believes the addition of a Veterans Memorial Park would increase connectivity throughout that region of Yelm, but also allow local veterans to be honored and for history to be taught.
“This is going to be a major project,” Colt said during a community conversations event on Wednesday, March 12.
The public works director said the park would be primarily state funded if grants are secured. As grants haven’t been secured yet, Colt said this project remains contingent on funding.
“If it doesn’t get funded through the state, we’ll look to other avenues, but we’d probably put it on hold for a while,” Colt said. “We’re working with Senator (Jim) McCune and State Representative Matt Marshall. They’re the main people making the request. (Representative) Andrew Barkis is going to be working on it, too, but they’re the main people focusing on it. Andrew is helping us with our transportation projects. He’s the lead on those.”
Across the street from the city’s Mill Road property, Thurston County owns a chunk of land that Colt said could eventually be used to construct a parking lot.
“Currently, people will illegally park there, and so we want to make sure it’s a safe place for people to park their car and go on the trail. Especially for folks from out of town. We have a lot of people coming from out of town to use this trail,” Colt said.
The parking lot project will be started immediately once funds are secured, according to Colt.
He added that there will be an opportunity for residents to purchase bricks to be featured at the veterans memorial park.
“You’ll be able to engrave names or show support on them, anything school appropriate. We’ll have a path, and it will be initially gravel, but as we get bricks as people buy them, we’ll slowly turn it into a brick path,” Colt said. “It could theoretically raise a lot of money as we sell bricks, which is awesome. It’s a good way for someone to be invested in the project and honor a veteran, someone in their life. If we get the money we want, or if we don’t, we’ll figure it out. We’ll build to make it, I’d say, the best memorial in Thurston County, if not Western Washington. It’s going to be amazing. I’m pretty excited. As a history teacher, I’m pretty stoked for it.”
Colt said there would be parameters set in regards to who can be featured at the memorial, but for now, there is nothing set in stone. He’s open for suggestions, he said during the community conversations event.
“I’ve started to work with the VFW, and there will be some parameters set, but they’re going to be looser than just Yelm-proper. We were thinking about including anybody in the 98597 ZIP code, but nothing has been set in stone yet. The other idea we wanted, usually when you go to a memorial it’s for people who passed away, KIA or MIA. Instead of doing just that, we wanted to add anyone who served in the war onto that. That way, if you or your kids or parents served and they’re still alive, they can still be honored there,” Colt said. “It’s going to be done right.
“We haven’t set hard parameters yet, so as we get together, maybe we do want to include everyone in this upper south Thurston County,” he continued. “I think that’s totally an option on the table, and we haven’t set those parameters yet.”
