Vietnam Memorial "We wanted to do something more."

Funding secured for Vietnam memorial sculpture
Times Record News
Lana Sweeten-Shults
July 9, 2017

The Major Francis Grice Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution always has honored the country's servicemen and servicewomen.

"We as a group have honored Vietnam veterans, usually with a luncheon, but that wasn't honoring all of them," said Shirley King, an artist and a member of the organization. "We wanted to do something more."'

Two years ago, the group's then-regent, Ruth James, came up with the idea of commissioning a statue, King said, to honor all Vietnam veterans.

"Her husband was a Vietnam veteran."

And so started the DAR chapter's efforts to have such a monument built — a project that reached an important milestone recently.

The group announced it has raised the $170,000 needed to fund the artwork and landscaping around it. The memorial will be an 11-feet-tall bronze sculpture by Lubbock artist Garland Weeks, a Wichita Falls High School graduate who isn't new to the city's public arts landscape. Another of his works, "Vision of the Future," stands on the grounds of the Kemp Center for the Arts.
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