MADISON COUNTY VETERAN’S MEMORIAL

The Madison County Veterans Memorial Park is a dedicated space honoring veterans from World War I to the War on Terror. The park features monuments for each major conflict, an outdoor amphitheater for community events, and a central greenspace divided into quadrants representing the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. Each monument includes a “Soldier Stone,” a six-foot-tall polished marble stone with a heart-level hole symbolizing the ratio of lives lost to those who served.

The greenspace in the center of the path has been divided into four quadrants – Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. In the center of these zones are flags to those branches of service, and decommissioned pieces of equipment and artillery donated by the local Army Depot.

The Soldier Stone: Standing at six feet tall, at roughly the proportions of a typical soldier, these polished marble stones are designed to sit upright in the middle of platform. Each platform is designed to reflect the conditions of its war’s environment. At the Vietnam memorial, for example, the platform is densely planted with vegetation, while in the War on Terror the platform is constructed of sandstone.

Conspicuously carved into the center of the stone, at roughly the location of the human heart, is a hole. The hole is sized differently at each memorial location. It’s size, relative to the whole, references the ratio of lives lost to the total who served.