Central Florida Veterans Memorial Park Dedication

Central Florida Veterans Memorial Park Dedication
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 11, 2013

It was a fitting day to dedicated the Memorial Park at the Lake Nona VA Medical Center even though it will not be open until next year. There are 100,000 veterans being taken care of at the Bladwin Park VA in Orlando but there are 400,000 veterans in Central Florida, so we have been waiting for this since the ground breaking in 2008. Yes, 2008. There was a big event when we were all given shovels on 10-4-08. Since it was an election year, naturally most of us had our eyebrows raised. Back then Lake Nona was supposed to be opened by 2012.

Anyway, back to today. The VA didn't pay for the Memorial Park. Private donations paid for it along with a lot of businesses and bunch of people deciding that a beautiful location like this needed a beautiful area. They did it right! Here's a couple of videos on the service today and you can see part of the memorial.

From the Veterans Memorial Foundation, $2.2 million was raised to date of the $3 million needed. It sits on the shore of the lake in the 64 acre VA site. Eventually it will connect 24 mile bike/walking path.

This is the Director of the Orlando VA Medical Center, R. Timothy Liezert.

Dr. Neil Euliano told fascinating stories about some local heroes on the panels of the Memorials. These are just two of them because the wind decided to take over the audio of my camera.