Local veterans, including Tony Cavarno, Jim Swant, Rex Ruck and Steve Olienyk, worked with Center Brothers Construction to place the last bricks in the Florence Veteran's Memorial Park.

Project started in 2004 comes to completion at Veteran's Memorial Park

Aug. 30, 2022 — A group of Florence's veterans gathered at the Veteran's Memorial Park at the south end of Bay Street last week to celebrate the laying of the final bricks on the Veteran's Memorial Wall.

Aug. 23 was the culmination of a project started in 2004 that came to completion due in no small part to the hard work of Florence's veteran community.

“I wouldn’t blame anyone who may have become frustrated by this process,” said local veteran Tony Cavarno, who was one of the founders of the project. “We had to get six different permits and by the time we got to the fifth one, the third one had expired, so it was easier to reapply than it was to get the permit extended.”

Initially, the plan was the build three walls of bricks at the park to honor veterans.

“So many people said ‘I need, a brick’ so we put up the fourth wall,” Cavarno said. “Then more people said ‘I need a brick’ so we put up the fifth and then a sixth. We just had to stop there.”

The bricks are for veterans of almost every war the United States has fought.

“There are 20 Civil War veterans, three Medal of Honor recipients and even a brick for one of our presidents, Ronald Reagan,” according to Cavarno.

Also, on the west side of the Veteran's Memorial Park parking lot is a row of five flag poles, each used to display a flag honoring one of the different branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, along with notation of the date the branch was established. In 2019, the U.S. Space Force was established. The veterans on hand stated that they had ordered a pole and an official Space Force flag and wished the public to know it would be installed as soon as it arrives.

For more information about the park, visit www.ci.florence.or.us/publicworks/veterans-memorial-park.