Central Park, Manhatten

The combat boots, wall and shoes will be in the Cherry Hill section of Central Park today (Saturday). Here is the map to the circular Cherry Hill area where the boots will be arranged in concentric circles. Map

A noon Press Conference will kick off Eyes Wide Open in New York City. Here is the schedule for the weekend.

Saturday, August 28 at Central Park's Cherry Hill Fountain, New York, N.Y. (Near Strawberry Fields at W. 72 St.)

12 noon - Press Conference - military personnel, family members and civic activists to participate

3 p.m. - Reading the names of U.S. service personnel - including 37 New York State soldiers - journalists and Iraqi civilians killed in the war

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Sunday, August 29 to Tuesday, August 31 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South

Noon to 1 p.m. - Speakers will address the gathering

3 p.m. - Reading names of U.S. service personnel, journalists and Iraqi civilians killed in war

Volunteer Extra Efforts

Over the course of the tour, volunteers have made extra efforts to make the exhibit happen. In Oberlin, OH, not only did they feel that it was the best community-building experience that they had had in years, they also wanted to travel to help other towns set up the memorial.

The latest example comes from Ohio as well, where one volunteer with MS told our AFSC staff person that she was exhausted, but felt that she definitely wanted to expend the effort to have Eyes Wide Open come to town. She said that she chose what activities she did very carefully and this was one that she believed in. She is involved in helping shoose the site.

AFSC Letter Printed in Newsweek

In Newsweek at the end of July, a 2/3 page photo of the combat boots from Philadelphia was included in an article entitled "Pain on Main Street." The article told of the 44% of troops killed in Iraq being from small towns. The photo was not well identified, so we wrote a letter calling attention to the nature of the exhibition.

In the August 23rd Newsweek, they published the letter. See below:

"Pain on Main Street" hit home. As the initiator of the American Friend's Service Committee's Iraq war memorial, the traveling exhibit, featured in that article's accompanying photo, I have talked to many families who have lost sons or daughters in Iraq.

In Taunton, MA, our "Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of the Iraq War," exhibit was on one side of town and the funeral of fallen soldier John James Van Gyzen, 20, was happening on the other side. After the burial, his mother came to the exhibit, placed a white rose in the pair of boots bearing his name and tied on his photo with red, white and blue striped ribbon. She said, "I guess I belong here."

Since the government has banned photos of flag-draped coffins coming home from Iraq, it has taken an exhibit like this to allow for the real mourning of this nation. No photo can do justice to the feeling of standing in the midst of the empty boots and imagining the lives that should be standing there.

[This part in italics they did not publish] Along with the combat boots, the exhibit contains a 24-foot wall listing the names and incidents of death of over 10,000 Iraqi civilians – three times the number of deaths we suffered on September 11 in a country one-twelfth the size of the United States. You might say that the "Pain on Main Street" is also being felt ten-fold in Baghdad.

Michael McConnell
Regional, Director
American Friends Service Committee

Vermont to Long Island

The trip from Burlington, Vermont to the next stop on the exhibit tour in Long Island passed close to the Canadian border.

The U.S. Customs Service had set up a road block in Vermont, stopping all vehicles.

Asked what was in the truck, our AFSC staff person, Stephen told the agent that it was Eyes Wide Open, an exhibit about the human cost of the Iraq War. The custom agent's eyes seemed to glaze over, not understanding. Stephen tried a few more explanations. Finally at a bit of a loss, Stephen said: "It's the boots exhibit."

The eyes of the customs agent lit up, he tapped the cab and said, "Oh, good work, keep on going."

He did not even open up the back of the truck to inspect it.

Buzz in Brattleboro

In Brattleboro quite a buzz was created on the street concerning the exhibit.

It was one of the most emotional stops for the exhibition – many tears. People felt that they should be there. Many people returned every day even though they were not signed up to volunteer.

On the street people were asking each other, "Have you seen the exhibit up at River Garden -- you have to go see it."

The River Garden is a public building – glass on both sides, glass atrium on top and bordering the river separating Vermont from New Hampshire. The boots just dominated the space. The entire community came together

Two women in Vermont came and helped both in Montpelier and Burlington -- they just stopped their lives for five days because it was something that they just had to do. Our AFSC staff person tried to take them out to lunch to thank them. Only one accepted and she just wanted gravy fries. Every time he wanted to thank them, they said, no, thank you for doing this. So many people were honored to be able to work with the exhibit. Everybody is being very selfless when it comes to volunteering for the exhibit.

New England Honors Guatemalan

Volunteers tell me that the man who’s been sitting among the boots for twenty minutes is a former Marine, a Gulf War Vet. I approach, slowly, in the way that one learns over time spent among the boots. At first, he doesn’t answer. I come back later, and stand nearby. He’s muttering to himself: “There’s been enough killing.” He says that this, the numbers here, are nothing to what the reality must be. He says he was on the ground in Gulf War I, and saw the reality through his own eyes. “There’s been enough killing.”

A Guatemalan immigrant woman remarks in Spanish that there is only one pair of boots for a Guatemalan, an immigrant who joined the Marines with the promise of citizenship for himself and his family. His boots rest between Georgia and Hawaii. She returns with roses, which she places in his boots “so that he won’t be alone.”

from Noah Merrill

Interlude

One of the main criticsms leveled at the exhibit in the past few weeks was that we have not shown the thousands of people killed by Saddam Hussein.

True. But we have also not tried to represent the 200,000 Iraqis killed in the first Gulf War, nor have we attempted to symbolize the 500,000 Iraqis who died under the US/UN economic sanctions against Iraq. The majority of that half a million of humanity were children.

Perhaps that is what we need – to cart around hundreds of thousands of tiny shoes and dump them in the federal plazas throughout the country until the nation realizes the futility of war. The aggressive coercion of the past decade has left the United States isolated, hated and vulnerable to attack.

The deaths by starvation, by lack of insulin, by infection due to lack of antibiotics are not recorded in the same way as the deaths of soldiers, but no less worthy of memorialization.

It seems that those of us living in the United States who seek peace need to keep showing the amount of deaths perpetrated in our name.

More Stories from East Coast

Volunteers tell me that the man who’s been sitting among the boots for twenty minutes is a former Marine, a Gulf War Vet. I approach, slowly, in the way that one learns over time spent among the boots. At first, he doesn’t answer. I come back later, and stand nearby. He’s muttering to himself: “There’s been enough killing.” He says that this, the numbers here, are nothing to what the reality must be. He says he was on the ground in Gulf War I, and saw the reality through his own eyes. “There’s been enough killing.”

A Guatemalan immigrant woman remarks in Spanish that there is only one pair of boots for a Guatemalan, an immigrant who joined the Marines with the promise of citizenship for himself and his family. His boots rest between Georgia and Hawaii. She returns with roses, which she places in his boots “so that he won’t be alone.”

More stories from the Road

Kathleen Belanger whose son Sgt. Gregory Belanger was killed in Iraq went up to the attic to go through her son's things. She was looking for a pair of size 91⁄2 wide, black combat boots, that had his name and social security number sewn on a tag inside.

She took his boots to Turners Falls last week to replace the symbolic ones from the exhibit that had represented his life. That makes the second pair of boots that has come from the actual soldier. see news story

More:One elderly man with a cane passed the exhibit and said that there should be a padded place to kneel down because this was sacred ground.

More: One of our staff traveling with the exhibit went to a bank to cash a check. They started questioning him why he was so far away from Chicago and asking other questions, reluctant to cash his check at first.

When he said that he was with the Eyes Wide Open Exhibit, they said how impressed they were with the exhibit and they cashed his check immediately.

Military Families Donate Boots to Exhibit

At the press conference Tuesday, Kevin and Joyce Lucey recounted the events leading up to their son Jeffrey's suicide that occurred a few months after his return from Iraq.

While in Iraq Jeffrey found himself in an alleyway, trying to avoid gunfire. He saw in the street the body of an Iraqi boy who had been shot in the head. Although the boy was already dead, Jeff ran out, picked up the body, and carried it into the safety of the alley. Clenched in the boy's fist was a small blood-stained American flag. Jeff took the flag and kept it with him for the rest of his life.

The Luceys were thrilled when Jeff returned home last year, apparently safe, but his injuries were just not visible yet.

At first, Jeff seemed happy to have his life back, but the family noticed he was drinking a lot, and he became more and more reclusive. On Christmas eve he became irritable and at one point threw two dog tags at his sister and said, "Your brother is a murderer." The dog tags belonged to two Iraqi unarmed soldiers that Jeffrey had killed at point blank range because he had been ordered to do so.

He kept the dog tags and wore them around his neck to honor the two men.

After Christmas the nightmares were so frequent and tumultuous that Jeffrey got little sleep. He vomited every day. Family members often stayed up most of the night with him.

On May 28, 2004 the family had Jeff committed to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds, MA. He was discharged four days later, diagnosed with alcoholism and mood swings.

"Nobody really saw him," said his father. "The records show he indicated to somebody at the VA that he was contemplating suicide, but we were never informed."

On June 21, Kevin stayed up with Jeff until 1 a.m. Jeff asked if he could curl up in his father's lap. In what he regards as one last gift, the father cradled his grown son.

On June 22 Jeffrey hung himself in the basement of his parent's home. They buried him with the blood-stained American flag that belonged to the young Iraqi boy. The Luceys donated Jeffrey's boots to the Eyes Wide Open exhibition in honor of their son.

Kevin told the news media: "This goddamn war is creating thousands of Jeffreys. "We don't want people to make the same mistakes we did."

see the report in The Republican from Springfield, MA

Amherst Begins Western MA Tour

Tonight the family of a soldier, who committed suicide one month after returning from Iraq, will speak at the opening ceremonies of Eyes Wide Open in Amherst, Massachusetts.

The U.S. military has recently reported that there have been an unusually high number of suicides among U.S. troops in Iraq during the past year. 24 soldiers have taken their lives during the past 12 months in Iraq and Kuwait. There have also been seven suicides among troops who have recently returned, including two soldiers who killed themselves while hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Hospital, according to a report in the Toronto Star.

That equates to a suicide rate of 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers, compared with a rate of 12.8 for the Army as a whole in 2003 and an average rate of 11.9 for the Army during the 1995-2002 period, according to officials familiar with the study.

Previous Army investigations of increases in the suicide rate during the 1990s and more recent probes had similar findings -- soldiers tend to avoid seeking help with stress or other mental health problems for fear of being stigmatized.