by Jason Savage | May 30, 2012 | Blog, General
This update was written on Memorial Day 2012. The president, politicians, and citizens across the USA honored our men and women who sacrificed their lives for freedom. God bless all our veterans. The past three months, I have been working with several people who I thought could help us move this project forward. Unfortunately, nothing has materialized from that effort. I am working on a new project that I hope will focus attention on the memorial, but it is going to take some time. I would like to launch it by Christmas. I am looking for some inspiring or tragic war photos that I can use. I am sure many of you Afghanistan and Iraq veterans have taken some. If you would like to help out and have your photos credited, please send me a message. I will give you details on the project. In the meantime, If you have any thoughts on how we might work together to move this effort forward, please get in touch. I would like to hear from you. God bless America. Jason...
by Jason Savage | Mar 28, 2012 | Blog, General
Preface: Please do not misconstrue this post or any of my others to be negative. I, along with my colleagues, have been working tirelessly on this project for eight years with the explicit vision to make this memorial the finest and most distinctive in the world. I simply want to honestly share with you some of the realities that make this endeavor, at times, frustrating. Senator Bob Dole intimated in his 2006 letter to me that this would be a most arduous task. At that time, I could not fully appreciate his counsel. Today, I do. The following quote is from the book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachael Maddow. “While America has been fighting two of its longest ever boots-on-the-ground wars in the decade following 9/11, and fighting them simultaneously, less than one percent of the adult US population has been called upon to strap on those boots. ‘Not since the peace time years between World War I and World War II,’ according to a 2011 Pew Research Center study, ‘has a smaller share of Americans served in the armed forces.’ Half of the American public says it has not been even marginally affected by ten years of constant war. We’ve never in our long history been further from the ideal of the citizen-soldier, from the idea that America would find it impossible to go to war without disrupting domestic civilian life.” Senator Joe Lieberman made this insightful comment on March 22, 2007. “Our military is fully engaged in this war, but most of the rest of America is not. Five years after September 11,...
by Jason Savage | Mar 5, 2012 | Blog, General
It has been quite some time since my last post. This is an update. Unfortunately, I have nothing good to report. I have tried to make contacts with influential business leaders as well as a young, very popular country singer, but to date, I have had no success. The handlers will not pass along my communications. I am open for suggestions. I now have over fifty pages of attempted contacts. I do keep a log for future reference. Now that we are in the midst of the dollar driven presidential campaign, I doubt that we could get any mention about a memorial to our war dead. Not that we have had any success with that in the past. I am contemplating sharing with you some of the more, what I have to call, unbelievable contact attempts. I have always hesitated from doing that because of the perception of being negative. But up to now, nothing has generated any interest in this effort. I will give this some more consideration. If you are interested, I would be happy to share the results of those efforts...
by Jason Savage | Jun 11, 2011 | Blog, General
I am in the process of planning a 5K road race that could be used as a prototype event for a national series; much like the Stroh’s Run For Liberty back in the mid 80’s. I am going to make a survey available to runners to gauge their interest in the event. If you are a runner or one who might like to support the memorial through a running event, I welcome you to take the survey. Visit my running site at www.YourRunningMemories.com and click on the link. A successful series would generate much needed publicity about the memorial project throughout the running community. That may lead to some media coverage as news of the events spread. This road race would be very special. It will honor the participants as the Very Important People (VIP) they are for helping to raise funds for the memorial. It will be an event a runner would not want to...
by Jason Savage | Jun 1, 2011 | Blog, General
We designed a Tribute Sponsorship Program and launched it in January, 2011. The focus was corporate support for local fallen heroes. Basically we divided the projected cost of the memorial by the number of fallen heroes and assigned that dollar figure to a personal tribute destined for display on the memorial. That rounded figure was $3,500. I spent three months earlier this year contacting major corporations. None of them would sponsor a single tribute to honor a local fallen soldier. Several responded with, “It just doesn’t fit with our marketing campaigns.” Every corporation I contacted was flush with cash. A representative from the Wal-Mart Foundation told me they were not interested in sponsoring a tribute for the fallen soldier from Fayetteville, AK., hometown to their headquarters. The corporation had $7.4 billion in cash on hand at the time. A vice president at a local corporate headquarters (Raleigh, NC) told me they simply did not have enough money to sponsor a $3,500 tribute. They had $647 million in cash on hand. I got similar responses from many representatives. A substantial number would not respond to our messages or phone calls. It appears that they decided to use the ‘plausible deniability’ option. We decided to abandon the program. I am now making an assumption, but I believe the failure to attract corporate support may have something to do with our status as an unknown entity. Maybe they simply will not risk supporting an organization they never heard of. We’ll never know because representatives either would not respond or would not respond honestly. I wonder if the representatives would have responded differently...
by Jason Savage | Mar 5, 2011 | Blog, General
I spent the day preparing a list of local Tribute Sponsorship contacts for Monday’s calls. The list includes Fortune 500 corporations and local political leaders. Outback Steakhouse, who supports Operation Homefront, suggested on their website to contact a local restaurant about donations. After speaking with representatives at other stores like Target and Staples, I learned that individual stores are authorized to give gift cards, merchandise, and in some cases cash, but the donation level had a very low cap. I may end up contacting Outback’s corporate offices. If any of you can recommend a company or individual who may consider sponsoring a hero’s tribute, please contact...
by Jason Savage | Mar 3, 2011 | Blog, General
Many people ask my why we took on such an immense project. That is a reasonable question. Carl Regutti, an award winning sculptor and chemist, and I refined a technique to do very high-resolution etching on oxide or PVD colored stainless steel. We began R&D in 2004 and continued experiments through 2006. Due to the nature of the coating and the durability of 316 stainless, these etched pieces should survive the elements for thousands of years. During this R&D, Carl and I began contemplating how we might honor our military heroes. Both of us are getting older, and neither of us served in the military. Carl has a brother who is a high-ranking military officer. My father was in the OSS during WWII and my mother was a stenographer on the War Crimes Trials in Nuremberg. She later worked for the CIA and then US Customs as an inspections supervisor. We both feel very strongly about the sacrifices our military men and women have made to keep this country free. We researched the DC memorials and read how long they took to put in place. By the time the WWII Memorial was completed the parents of the fallen had all passed away, never getting to see the tribute to these heroes. The Commemorative Works Act adds another impediment to the memorial process. So we designed a memorial that features the black, surgical stainless steel tributes we perfected in the lab. Honoring our fallen heroes in the wars on terrorism was our first thought. After conversations with representatives in DC who oversee monuments, we were advised that if we wanted...
by Jason Savage | Mar 2, 2011 | Blog, Military
I was searching through military related sites last night, and I ran across one that featured a song by Trish Lester. This is a very moving song. I thought that you might like to hear...
by Jason Savage | Mar 1, 2011 | Blog, General
I just started to compile my list of NC based corporations to approach about sponsoring a tribute to a local fallen warrior. If you have not read about our Sponsor A Tribute program, a sponsorship is only $3,500. (That program has been discontinued.) A few years ago you may remember reading this headline: Bank of America will receive $20 billion in fresh US government aid and $118 billion worth of guarantees against bad assets. Bank of America has an online form to apply for grants. Here’s what I discovered. The following is from the Bank of America website. The following organizations are not eligible for funding: Organizations that deny service to a potential client or beneficiary on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, veteran, or disability status Individuals, including those seeking scholarships or fellowship assistance Political, labor, fraternal organizations, or civic clubs Religious organizations (for example, churches and synagogues). Some secular community service programs such as soup kitchens, shelters for the homeless, and job banks are eligible, even when sponsored by religious groups. Individual pre-K-12 schools (public or private) Sports, athletic events, or athletic programs Travel-related events, including student trips or tours Development or production of books, films, videos, or television programs Memorial campaigns I was shocked. Here’s a company who gladly took billions of tax payer dollars and they post a list like this! Based on their restrictions, a grant submission would be futile. What are these people...
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