Monument to help explain, comfort Gold Star Families

A project three years in the making will be unveiled in January to help explain the pain of families who lost loved ones during service to their country.

A community-based committee with ties to the military and/or loss are putting the finishing touches on a Gold Star Families memorial, to be erected on the southeast side of Elmer Thomas Park’s Lake Helen. The area already is home to a monument to the USS Oklahoma, and the two monuments are the beginning of what the City of Lawton plans as a place of quiet contemplation.

That quiet is critical, said Brenda Spencer-Ragland, one of the core group of organizers who worked with the Hershel “Woody” Williams Medal of Honor Foundation to make the 80-square-foot Gold Star Families Memorial a reality. The monuments help educate the public about the sacrifice Gold Star Families have made, but they also are places for family to remember their loved ones.

While each contains panels citing Homeland, Family, Patriot and Sacrifice, the monument is designed to be unique to each community, Spencer-Ragland said, explaining Lawton’s monument will feature a buffalo, the Oklahoma and American flags, and a scissor-tailed flycatcher. The monument’s most stunning feature is a cutout of a saluting military member, standing between the Patriot and Sacrifice panels. In Lawton’s case, that cutout will be backlit by the water of Lake Helen.

The monument is nearing completion and plans are under way to transfer it from Idaho to Lawton for placement in early January, committee member Frank Thibodeau said. It’s the final steps for a journey that began with discussion before progressing to permission from the City Council in August 2021 to place the monument in a city park, to the local fundraising efforts.

Spencer-Ragland said the decision was made early on to keep the organizing group small.

Members are involved for different reasons. Spencer-Ragland has longtime ties to the Army, including a stint as the head of Fort Sill’s Morale Welfare and Recreation. Vicky Flores is a Gold Star family member: her son Wilfred “Willie” Flores Jr. was 20 years old when he died in 2007 from wounds sustained during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Burl Ragland provides the engineering expertise, Brenda Spencer-Ragland said with a smile, while Flores’ wife Vickie Johnson-Flores cheerfully admits to providing support and prodding when and where it is needed. Frank Thibodeau is retired military (Flores served as well), providing strong direction, while Carrie Austin, Brenda Spencer-Ragland’s daughter, helps with prodding and coordination.

Spencer-Ragland said the project is one in a series associated with her ties to the military community, including an outreach program and discussions with Flores. She said as she got to know Willie Flores through those who knew him, she realized what kind of young man he was, someone who died because he volunteered to replace a friend on a night maneuver.

“Willie Flores did that for his friend,” she said, of the “push” that knowledge gave her to help educate others.

The idea of the monument was officially born in May 2021 and strongly supported by others in the community. Spencer-Ragland specifically cited local banker Mark Henry of Liberty National Bank, who helped launch the fundraising effort needed to provide the 50 percent local match for grant funds for the $80,000 project.

It was a project grounded in the local community, Spencer-Ragland and Johnson-Flores said, citing fundraisers such as bike runs, a craft show, quilts and a thrift store. The group worked around COVID-19 restrictions to place cans in stores to collect money, Flores said, adding while not every placement was successful, there were sites where customers were happy to donate.

Flores said the idea of a monument for families is important.

“A lot of families don’t want to talk about it,” she said, adding the monument gives them a place to sit quietly and think about the one they lost.

Thibodeau said education is equally important.

“A lot of people don’t know what it is,” he said, of a Gold Star Family designation.

Johnson-Flores said she was among that number.

“Now, I’m one of them,” she said, with a look at her wife.

Johnson-Flores said she is proud of the community effort that raised the local matching funds.

“A lot of governments paid for theirs,” she said of monuments placed in other communities. “Ours is privately funded.”

Flores said she has worked on other projects to mark the memory of her son, to include Fort Sill’s Flores Hall Youth Center and a bridge over Medicine Bluff Creek named in his honor. While the Gold Star Families monument also will mark his memory, it also serves as a reminder of others who have died.

“It’s emotional,” she said.