Moving WWI memorial opens near the Mall reminding us: remember the past
We leave you our deaths, give them their meaning
This memorial called “The Weight of Sacrifice” tells the story of a reluctant soldier who leaves his family to fight, charges into combat, sees men killed around him, and recovers from the shock to return to his family. But does he really recover, one wonders.
Memorial today has template for bas-relief
The final installation will occur in 2024.
How final sculpture will appear at night
Visit the sculptor Sabin Howard's website for his words on sacred art and more photos and videos of this work in progress.
While encouraging people to stay in touch with our history through my fiction, I learn so much along the way. My hero Nikos spends his time in the Great War going out on dawn flights to map the terrain in a little bathtub of a plane, the French Caudron G.4. Prior to the war, topography maps did not exist, so soldiers had little idea what terrain they would encounter. Those dawn flights – planes illuminated against the rising son - resulted in many deaths by the "Red Baron," von Richthofen. By happenstance, I actually saw Nikos’ plane at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum in northern Virginia.
Nikos, my fictional hero, also bears the weight of sacrifice...
made heavier for him as for many by the deaths of family during the global flu pandemic that followed the war.
When this vulnerable hero first encounters our Roaring 20’s liberated heroine Estela – well, the time is not right for them.