Gold Star event allows private time at Freedom Wall

MARSEILLES - There is more to the Illinois Motorcycle Freedom Run than Gold Star Mothers, believes their spokesman, Tom “Big Daddy” Yarber. “We're changing what the state and nation calls Gold Star Mothers,” noted Yarber, Marseilles coordinator for the IMFR, a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring U.S. military personnel killed in combat in the Middle East. “The Freedom Run cherishes the mothers, but there is more to the family. There are fathers, husbands, wives, and children. So, we are calling our event Gold Star Family Day, because you've got to cherish the whole family. It's something the whole family needs.” The ceremony and outdoor barbecue Saturday was the third for the IMFR, which sponsors the Middle East Combat Veterans Memorial Wall at the Illinois River. It was the first such event open to news media. “We had tried to keep the media away because we didn't know what would be happening. With new families coming here, sometimes it's hard,” Yarber said of the memorial, which today contains more than 5,000 names of combat dead nationwide. “We found we'd like the media to come and know what we're doing as an organization, and what we're doing for people to know about the town and the Memorial Wall.” Another 135 new names of combat dead were carved into the Freedom Wall last week. More than 200 guests attended the event Saturday. The memorial was conceived by the IMFR and constructed in 2004 by volunteer tradesmen with donations and contributions. The Freedom Wall is the only memorial of its kind in the nation built during a war. The eight granite slabs that comprise the wall contain the names of Middle East combat dead from the late 1970s to the present. Yarber, of Justice, noted the IMFR Gold Star Families Day is an event needed by families of the combat fallen. “The ceremony in Chicago is for the mothers, who get the opportunity to lay roses down for their children. The event here we discussed a couple years ago as a little barbecue, blocking off outsiders - a day at the Memorial Wall for the families.” His reference is to the event Sunday at the University of Chicago in which Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn presented Gold Star Banners to 23 Illinois mothers whose sons and daughters died in military combat in the Middle East. Gold Star Mothers Day has been commemorated the last Sunday in September since President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the first event in 1936. Gold Star Father Ronald Slavenas, 71, of Genoa, experienced World War II in his homeland as a child. At the Freedom Wall, he honored his late son, 1st Lt. Brian Slavenas, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilot shot down by enemy fire in Fallujah, Iraq, on Nov. 2, 2003. “The war was over, supposedly, but he was in the Illinois National Guard, an aviation unit out of Peoria, and they had those choppers - the CH-47 Chinooks,” said Ron Slavenas. “Fifteen others died with him, and 20 survived. It was a number of years ago, but the pain doesn't go away.” The lieutenant was with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. His father served in Germany with the 11th Airborne in the 1950s. He began his U.S. military service with the 82nd Airborne during the Eisenhower Administration. Born in Lithuania in 1937, he was deported by the Russians in 1941. “My grandfather was head of the Lithuanian Evangelical Reformed Church, and a prime candidate to either go to Siberia or get shot,” Ron Slavenas said. “The Germans and Russians made a secret deal to split up some of that area. During this time, a lot of people got out, if they had any German connection.” The family fled to Austria, then to Germany. “We had no choice,” he recalled. “When we left Lithuania, I was 4. It was traumatic. When I turned kindergarten age, I was Germanized. I went to German school, so my accent is German-Lithuanian.” Freedom Wall Co-founder Jerry Kuczera told of noticing an elderly Spanish couple at the memorial. The woman had tears in her eyes. He went over and asked if everything was OK. “My son and daughter on the wall,” she told him in broken English. “I said, ‘I'm sorry for the loss of your son and daughter,'” Kuczera replied. “She said, ‘Oh no, no, sir. You no understand. They all my sons and daughters. I'm thankful for my freedom in America, so I come here to pray, me and my husband, for my sons and my daughters and my freedom.'” Wall co-founder Tony Cutrano told the Gold Star families their loss is everyone's loss. “I promise you this, we will not forget,” he said. “God bless you all.” Yarber asked all visitors to the wall to sign the guest book. “Because possibly after 10 years, we can possibly get the chance to make this a national monument, and we need to prove people are coming to the wall,” he said. Yarber then invited the families to enter the memorial area, consecrated by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn two years ago. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Yarber said, “the wall is yours.”