Patton memorial approved 5-0 (or was it 3-2?)

In a vote that seemed to pit the competing values of going along to get along versus the freedom to dissent from the majority view, the city council went with unity and voted unanimously to allow construction of a memorial to fallen Boulder City veteran Shane Patton to happen in Wilbur Square rather than in Veterans’ Memorial Park where all other military memorials in the city are located.

Prior to a last-minute appeal for unanimity by Mayor Joe Hardy, the council was obviously split 3-2 on the placement issue with Hardy and Councilmember Steve Walton in the dissenting minority.

Prior to this vote, two other city bodies did come to split decisions on the issue of placement with the Historical Preservation Commission voting 3-1 to approve the proposed location and the Parks and Recreation Commission voting 3-2 to advise the council to allow the monument to be placed in the middle of the park that sits between City Hall and the Bureau of Reclamation building at the top of the hill.

Assuming there are no bumps in the road that make the location untenable, the park that has long been a focal point of Boulder City’s early history and its ties to Hoover Dam will also include a single memorial to a single fallen soldier.

During discussion of the issue among council members, Hardy expressed concern on a number of levels, including that city staff had already said that the monument, as designed in the application, would not comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act (often referred to as the ADA) in terms of access and that the city’s public works staff had noted that the base on which the bronze statue would sit might interfere with the root systems of multiple mature trees in the area leading to either damage to the roots or, possibly, eventual damage to the monument from said roots.

Walton spoke about the danger of placing a single veteran memorial in a location removed from all of the others in the city.

“The concern I have is that we run the risk of differentiating between the veterans’ service and their sacrifice,” he said. “I would really think that we would be remiss as a community to place different memorials in different places and therefore, just incidentally, unintentionally create a ‘less-than’ or a ‘more-than’ sentiment toward people’s offerings and their sacrifice.”

Walton continued, “That’s a concern I have by placing this kind of memorial anyplace other than Veterans’ Memorial Park. Because to me it gives the impression that he’s different from any other veteran. What are the odds that this tiny community has two veterans killed in action in the past two decades and my hope is that there are no more, ever. But, heaven forbid that there be one, then where does that memorial go?”

Walton concluded by noting that he had lost sleep over the implications of this vote saying that the thing that “tipped the scale” for him was in differentiating the service and sacrifice of one veteran over another, saying that the placement in Wilbur Square appeared to “go down that road.”

Shane Patton was a longtime Boulder City resident and Navy SEAL who died on June 28, 2005 in the mountains of Afghanistan during Operation Red Wings. Shane and 15 other special forces members were onboard a Chinook helicopter that was shot down while attempting to rescue four Navy SEALs that were involved in a firefight. In total, 19 U.S. Special Forces soldiers lost their lives during that mission. It was the largest Navy SEAL casualty in the nation’s history.

The Shane Patton Foundation was formed in 2007 and has been raising money in Boulder City every year since to fund things such as college scholarships for BCHS graduates and uniforms for local sports teams.

The Shane Patton Memorial Monument is a 1.5X scale bronze sculpture of Patton. Five years ago, the foundation began raising money for the Shane Patton memorial statue and was able to raise enough to fund the memorial relatively quickly with the help of a single donor.

The statue itself is based on a 3D model created by Boulder City-born artist Barret Thomson. The bronze statue itself was made by sculptor Gregorz Gwiazda, who is located in Warsaw, Poland.

The Patton family has deep roots in Boulder City, including Shane’s great-grandfather, who worked on the construction of Hoover Dam. Shane’s father Jeff Patton, who was also a Navy SEAL, was born in Boulder City Hospital and still resides in Boulder City today.

While staff advised putting the memorial in Veterans’ Memorial Park from the beginning, the organizers of the effort have pushed for Wilbur Square because it gets more traffic that the larger park to the south. Wilbur Square sits in the heart of downtown Boulder City and is home to the majority of the city’s events, including festivals, car shows and the starting line for the Fourth of July Parade.