Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026 | 2 a.m.
When Las Vegas City Councilwoman Francis Allen-Palenske looks implicit the caller Nevada State Veterans Memorial, she sees generations: aging veterans walking among gangly bronze statues representing antithetic eras of war, reflecting connected their years of work lone steps distant from a playground wherever families and children play freely.
State and section leaders gathered Wednesday, connected Veterans Day, to grant those who person served and unfastened the memorial astatine the Thunderbird Family Sports Complex successful northwest Las Vegas.
Allen-Palenske said the mounting is fitting for the complex, which was named aft the Thunderbird squadron astatine Nellis Air Force Base.
“The memorial stands arsenic a imperishable testament to bravery, selflessness, and the sacrifice of men and women who reply the telephone of duty,” Allen-Palenske said astatine the expansive opening ceremony. “I anticipation this memorial besides serves arsenic a reminder to those children and their families of the sacrifices made by our veterans to support their freedoms and alteration the opportunities that we each bask contiguous due to the fact that down each name, each uniform, and each statue is simply a story, a communicative of work and emotion of country, and those stories merit to beryllium remembered, not conscionable today, but for generations.”
The memorial features an open-air promenade with landscaping, an outdoor amphitheater, acquisition signage and walls of quotes from celebrated figures successful past related to the equipped forces.
Its centerpiece is simply a acceptable of 18 bronze statues, each 7.5 feet tall, crafted by sculptor Douwe Blumberg. The authorities of Nevada commissioned the statues successful 2011 to grant American work members from the Revolutionary War done the contiguous day, and they erstwhile stood extracurricular the aging Grant Sawyer State Office Building adjacent downtown Las Vegas.
Each statue represents a country from a antithetic warfare the U.S. has fought, opening with the Revolutionary War and ending with the War connected Terror. Scenes see soldiers lasting with their guns, a wounded worker being carried from the battlefield by comrades, and a household explaining the past of U.S. equipped struggle to their children.
Among the figures are a Civil War soldier, a World War II worker and nurse, a Vietnam War soldier, a Gulf War aviator and a modern-day work subordinate representing those presently successful the equipped forces.
Other statues correspond the families of work members, “reminding america that erstwhile 1 serves, the full household serves, too,” said Rommel Ferrer, lawman manager of the Nevada Department of Veterans Services.
Vincent Palmieri Jr., inferior vice commandant of the Military Order of the Purple Heart Chapter 711, said galore veterans regularly visited the statues downtown for remembrance ceremonies and healing.
But the Grant Sawyer gathering was shuttered successful 2024 aft years of complaints — leaking sewage, achromatic mold and different problems.
That year, aft proceeding the statues would beryllium moved to the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery successful Boulder City, Palmieri started a petition to support them successful Las Vegas. Brendan Vargas, a retired elder maestro sergeant successful the Air Force, learned of the petition, which had gathered much than 1,300 signatures, and brought it to Allen-Palenske, who began moving to find the statues a imperishable location successful her district.
Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office, Nevada State Public Works and the Nevada Department of Veterans Services helped Allen-Palenske hunt for a site, which was aboriginal confirmed to beryllium the Thunderbird Family Sports Complex astatine 6105 North Durango Drive.
The $10 cardinal task is simply a collaboration betwixt the authorities of Nevada, the City of Las Vegas and the Mayor’s Fund for Las Vegas LIFE, an autarkic nonprofit that collects donations for metropolis initiatives. The authorities contributed $3 million.
“The Nevada State Veterans Memorial has a beauteous caller location astatine Thunderbird Sports Complex, wherever generations of Nevadans and visitors volition person the accidental to acquisition this almighty message,” said Col. Mary Devine, manager of the Nevada Department of Veterans Services. “Through its singular bronze sculptures, it honors the courageousness and the sacrifice of those who served, but it besides recognizes the quality broadside of our subject service. It tells stories of work members, of veterans, and of the families who emotion them.”
Nevada’s 2 different state-recognized veterans memorials are some successful the north: the Battle Born Memorial to the Fallen connected the Carson City Capitol Complex grounds and the Mustang 22 Memorial astatine the Army Aviation Support Facility successful Stead.
Nearly 219,000 veterans, much than 10,000 active-duty work members and much than 6,000 members of the National Guard and Reserves unrecorded successful Nevada with their families, according to the Nevada Governor’s Office.
Mayor Shelley Berkley commended the veterans successful attendance and said she is “so precise arrogant to beryllium the politician of a metropolis that values and honors and appreciates its veterans.”
Berkley attends services each twelvemonth astatine the Southern Nevada State Veterans Memorial Cemetery, which she called “a spot of mourning.”
“This is simply a surviving memorial wherever veterans tin instrumentality their children and their grandchild and locomotion astir this beauteous parkland and amusement them the statue that represents their clip successful work and beryllium present to contemplate, to remember, to reminisce, and to stock their thoughts with their loved ones,” Berkley said. “This is an important happening for our city, and I americium truthful delighted that truthful galore radical are present and that I’m capable to stock this bonzer moment.”
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