Record-Courier
Tribute to servicemen, women comes to area
Boots in Ravenna this weekend
Thursday, September 29, 2005
By Dave O'Brien, Record-Courier Staff Writer
Eighty-seven pairs of empty boots. Each representing
an Ohio serviceman or woman killed in the Iraq War.
Portage County residents are invited to walk amongst
these boots, standing silent sentry, on the Portage County Courthouse
Lawn in Ravenna from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday through Sunday as part
of "Eyes Wide Open Ohio," a project of the American Friends
Service Committee, co-sponsored by the Portage Democratic Coalition.
The AFSC, an organization founded by the Quaker faith
in 1917, "carries out service, development, social justice and
peace programs throughout the world," according to the AFSC Web
site. The traveling exhibition "honors the deaths of Ohio servicemen
and women in the Iraq War with a pair of boots representing each casualty.
It recognizes those men and women from Ohio who have been wounded
and the thousands of Iraqis who have been killed since the war began
in March 2003. A multimedia display explores the cost and consequences
of the war to Ohioans," according to the AFSC.
Co-organizer Barbara Gaskins, a member of the Portage
Democratic Coalition Steering Committee has called the display "a
spectacular thing to see." She and fellow Steering Committee
members Carol O'Laughlin and Judy Kirman worked to bring the display
to Ravenna, and received permission from Portage County commissioners
to put it before the public on the lawn of the courthouse.
The catalyst for having the display in Portage County
came from the "horrible crisis with all our servicemen"
from Ohio being killed and injured in Iraq. Twenty Marines from an
Ohio reserve unit, a portion of which is based in Brook Park, were
killed in two separate incidents in early August.
"We decided it was really time to do this,"
said Gaskins, who recently returned from a peace domonstration in
Washington, D.C. The boot display, she said, "creates a hallowed
ground" by honoring the death of Ohio servicemen.
"We neither are there to demonstrate or protest.
We're there to honor those boots," she said.
A silent, candelight vigil will accompany the display
beginning at 7 p.m. Saturday.
"It's in such a good spot," Gaskins said
of the location of the display. "People going by will see us."
Still, "it's unfortunate that we have to have
something like this," she said.
