Membership Notes

David Grossi and the Bonita Springs Veterans Memorial

BY MARC LEEPSON

VVA life member David Grossi has been one of the driving forces behind the Bonita Springs, Florida, Veterans Memorial, which was dedicated on Veterans Day 2012. Grossi chairs the Veterans Advisory Board in Bonita Springs, which is located on Florida’s Gulf Coast south of Fort Myers. The nine-member volunteer committee hosts the city’s annual Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Patriot Day, and Fourth of July ceremonies. The group also has brought the American Veterans Traveling Tribute Vietnam Wall to the city of 40,000.

The Veterans Advisory Committee conceived of the idea for an “all-service, all-war memorial,” as Grossi put it, in Bonita Springs’s Riverside Park in 2009. The theme of the memorial is “No One Left Behind,” which is etched in large letters on the top of the highly polished, black granite wall.

“We chose ‘No One Left Behind’ because it’s the universal creed of the military,” Grossi said, “and also because it signifies the promise that no generation of American veterans will abandon another.” The Veterans Advisory Board raised the $90,000 that it took to get the memorial built through donations from civic groups, veterans organizations, businesses, and individuals.

The twelve-foot-wide, thirteen-ton memorial features an image of three servicemen walking away from an ambush in Afghanistan. It also includes the seals of the five military branches, as well as the seal of the U.S. Merchant Marine.

A sidewalk called the Veterans Memorial Walkway is composed of engraved bricks that are inscribed with the names, ranks, and service branches of hundreds of southwest Florida veterans. The site also features one hundred American flags on ten-foot poles; each flag once was draped over the coffin of a Bonita Springs veteran. The families of the deceased veterans donated the flags to adorn the memorial.

The keynote speaker at the November 11 dedication was Randy McConnell, a highly decorated Army Vietnam War veteran who is a VVA life member from Michigan. “He was honored with a standing ovation by the crowd of about five hundred after recounting his time in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne during the 1968 Tet Offensive when he was wounded seven times,” Grossi said. “It brought the crowd to tears.”

The dedication program included a flyover by the Lee County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office Air Unit and a POW/MIA tribute.