Jacob Dimond / jake@yelmonline.com
Yelm Mayor Joe DePinto opened up the public comment portion of the Tuesday, April 22, Yelm City Council meeting by issuing an apology to local veteran organizations.
His apology came after the City of Yelm removed bricks memorializing local combat veterans from Yelm City Park.
The items are set to eventually be relocated at the planned Veterans Memorial Park on Mill Road.
The original memorial, constructed in 2006 at Yelm City Park, was near the city’s new wheelchair-inclusive “We-Go-Swing” and will be once again placed at its former home until the new Veterans Memorial Park is constructed.
“As the Mayor of Yelm, I want to offer my heartfelt apology regarding the recent removal and storage of the memorial at Yelm City Park. This was done without direct notification to veteran organizations on the timeline and process,” DePinto said. “This oversight was not in keeping with the respect and consideration that our veterans and our military community deserve.”
DePinto noted the memorial was damaged in 2017 in a car accident when an impaired driver ran into the display. He said any bricks damaged from the 2017 incident, or from the recent removal, will be replaced. A total of 10 bricks — seven from 2017 and three from 2025 — were damaged, according to the mayor.
“(Damages were) not replaced at the time, and over the last two years, city officials, myself included, have been discussing a new veterans memorial that we would like to build to honor all who have served. In 2023, Yelm City Council approved the purchase of a property next to Mill Pond where we would build the new memorial,” DePinto said. “Ensuring this plan is accepted by local veterans groups, we will be reinstalling the bricks, along with the monument, and they will stay there until the new Veterans Memorial (Park) is ready for a proper decommission and installation of those bricks. These bricks will be cleaned, restored and any bricks that were broken will be replaced.”
The city will build the new Veterans Memorial Park in phases, and DePinto is hopeful to see the first portion of the project beginning in 2026. Leading up to the construction of the new park and the inclusion of Yelm City Park’s memorial, DePinto said the city will be meeting with local veteran leaders from the VFW and American Legion to ensure their voices and concerns are being heard.
“Again, I want to send my deepest apologies for the way we handled this, and especially to all of the veterans here tonight,” he said. “After speaking with many local veterans, I understand the profound significance this action had, and I regret any distress or pain this situation might have caused. We’re going to make things right.”
DePinto’s heard from many community members, veterans included, that a process to decommission the Yelm City Park is wanted, and that the city will make sure the procedure occurs.
He’s hopeful for a quick turnaround of reinstalling the original Yelm City Park memorial, and believes the bricks will be returned to their original homes by Memorial Day.
“From the conversations and meetings I’ve had with veterans, I might not understand what you’ve gone through but I can understand how it’s making you feel now,” DePinto said. “Again, I am sorry for the lack of communication and the sudden removal of the memorial. We will do everything we can to make things right.”
Two representatives from the Nisqually Valley Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 5580, including Post Commander Steven Slater, a U.S. Air Force veteran, and two-year trustee John Thompson, a U.S. Army veteran, spoke during an April 22 meeting in regard to the memorial’s removal.
Slater — a lifelong resident of Washington currently residing near Lawrence Lake — said he’s disturbed by the actions of the city in removing “the only memorial to our veterans.”
“Living and falling in this city, I am part of the team that raised money for building the memorial and have enjoyed being able to reflect on those I’ve served with, and those who’ve given the ultimate sacrifice,” Slater said. “I call on the city council to take immediate action to replace the memorial until such time it can be properly relocated with the proper honors and respect that the lives of those who sacrificed deserve.”
The retired 20-year Air Force veteran said he was shocked when he began to receive phone calls about the removal of Yelm City Park’s veteran memorial. Every city representative Slater has talked to, he said, has associated the movement of the memorial to the planned new Veterans Memorial Park. He claimed no start date or funding methods were ever mentioned in these conversations.
“There was hope for a grant from Washington state. Given the decades of delays in improving the roads around Yelm, I believe a grant is far removed. I never dreamed the city would take such action without a clear timeline and funding to make things happen,” Slater said. “As veterans, we are accustomed to getting orders and making it happen. You would never expect a soldier to blow up a bridge without the orders of officers above them having given them such orders after careful planning and operations and logistics. It is actions that matter.”
Thompson, who stated he was a member of Yelm’s Planning Commission for 25 years, would like to see the formation of a committee in relation to the planned, new Veterans Memorial Park. He stated he’d be more than happy to serve on the committee, if one is created.
Following DePinto’s remarks, Thompson said he was originally going to read “a very emotional item” during the meeting; however, he stated the mayor answered a lot of his questions in his initial statement.
Thompson did, however, open up his heart to DePinto, council and community members in attendance about his emotional ties to the memorial at Yelm City Park.
“You do need to understand the impact that memorial has on a combat veteran. When we did this, we all put bricks down. I think a lot of you probably have a brick there,” Thompson said in the direction of other veterans in attendance at the meeting. “My wife, Linda, passed away in 2018, and we had two bricks there. I used to sit, after she passed away, at the bench there with her brick. What happened is, when I got word they were tearing it down, I happened to get over there just in time to see half her brick laying there. That’s a trauma to me, but not near the trauma it would be for veterans who were killed in action, whose families bricks are there, and the concern I have, that I’m bringing up to the council, is hopefully you’ve notified every family that their brick has been removed and you’re going to put it back.”
What some might not understand, Thompson said, is when a service member dies, many of them are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. While not everyone can afford to travel across the country to pay respects to loved ones buried at the national cemetery, Thompson said the local memorial was a location a lot of local military families used to pay their respects at.
“Justin Norton, for example, his brick is there (at Yelm City Park). That family may be bringing in their whole family on Memorial Day because they can’t go to Arlington. If they found that brick missing, it would just be like walking out to your mother’s grave and finding the tombstone had been stolen,” Thompson said. “I just wanted to bring that to you — the significance of why we’re so concerned, why we want it at least temporarily placed back to where it was — and the paper we handed out, there’s a detail on how you decommission a monument.”
