Honoring our fallen

Mark Davis vividly remembers the day in 2007 when he was watching Fox News and saw members of the U.S. military coming home from the Middle East in body bags.

The footage stirred in the Navy veteran’s soul a longing to do something to honor those who serve in the military. He and a pal in the Mid-Alabama Corvette Club in 2008 started a nonprofit foundation called Vettes for Vets to help meet needs of veterans and their families.

But that wasn’t enough for Davis. The Hoover resident also spearheaded the creation of the Veterans Memorial Arbor at Aldridge Gardens, which includes an area called the Gateway Pentagon Plaza to honor Hoover residents killed on active military duty in the war on terror.

There are three bronze busts of fallen military members from Hoover there, and now Davis and a retired Marine colonel from Tuscaloosa are taking the memorial effort statewide.

Davis and Col. Lee Busby are starting a new nonprofit called the Alabama Fallen Warriors Project, with the goal of raising enough money to create bronze busts of every military member from Alabama killed on active duty since 9/11.

There are about 120 such “fallen warriors,” and Davis estimates it will take another $1.3 million to complete all the busts and get them installed on pedestals.

So far, in addition to the three at Aldridge, there are three such bronze busts in Mobile and Gulf Shores, another on display in Tuscaloosa and two more under design in Tuscaloosa, Davis said.

That leaves about 111 yet to be created, including busts for two fallen warriors from Chelsea: Army Pfc. Joseph Berlin Jr., who died in December 2007 in Iraq at the age of 21, and Navy Seaman Matthew Lloyd Hicks, who died in June 2008 at the age of 22.

‘Very therapeutic’

Busby, who took up sculpting after he retired from the military, came up with the idea a couple years ago to do a bronze bust of CIA agent Mike Spann, a Winfield native who died in November 2001 in Afghanistan and became the first American killed in Afghanistan after 9/11.

He called Spann’s parents and pitched the idea to them out of the blue — more than a decade after Spann had been killed. Spann’s father listened and, after verifying Busby’s credentials, agreed to the project.

The Spanns came to Busby’s Tuscaloosa art studio about half a dozen times as Busby worked on the bust, making sure it was as close to Spann’s likeness as possible, Busby said.

Spann’s bust is now on display at the University of Alabama Office of Veterans and Military Affairs in Tuscaloosa and likely will be moved to Auburn, where Spann went to school.

Since completing Spann’s bust, Busby has finished two more, including one of Andrew Hand, an Army specialist killed in action in Afghanistan in July 2010.

Hand attended Hoover High while his dad, Kenneth Hand, coached football there. His father and stepmother, Renee Hand, lived in Hoover when he was killed. His sister, Laura Davis, lives in Hoover now, and Hand’s bust is one of the three on display at Aldridge Gardens.

Renee Hand said she and her husband think what Davis and Busby are doing is phenomenal. The process of creating the bronze busts is amazing, she said. “It was very healing, to tell you the truth.”

The Hands made several visits to Tuscaloosa to help Busby get their son’s likeness just right as he created a clay sculpture.

“He literally would mold it while we were talking to him,” Renee Hand said. “There’s just something very therapeutic about that — to be able to remember your child as someone is sculpting him.”

Hand’s bronze bust was installed at Aldridge Gardens in March. Renee Hand said it’s a blessing to have the bust in a beautiful, serene setting such as Aldridge instead of having to go to a cemetery to see it.

And they are thrilled that Davis and Busby want to memorialize other veterans in a similar fashion, she said.

“They’ve more than paid for the right to be remembered in this way — to be remembered and not forgotten,” she said.

Busby said involvement of the families in the process is essential. Most sculptures require the subject to be present in person while the sculptor studies his or her form from all angles, he said. 

When a person is already deceased, however, the likeness must be crafted from multiple photographs, but finding photographs of people taken with a side profile view is often difficult, he said.

Family members who know the subject best provide much-needed guidance to get the likeness correct, he said. In Spann’s case, Busby even brought in one of Spann’s daughters because she was said to have a chin and jawline like her dad.

Busby said he takes great care to get every detail right, including the buttons, ribbons and medals on the military uniform.

The next step is to take the clay sculpture and create a silicone rubber mold, a process in which the clay model is destroyed. The silicone rubber mold is then used to create a wax “positive.”

The wax is surrounded by a fireproof ceramic casing and is heated to 1,000 degrees and melted to the point where it runs out of the bottom of the ceramic casing. Then, bronze is poured into the casing to replace the wax “positive.”

When the ceramic casing is removed, the bronze bust is a charred block of metal with extra pieces sticking out of it from where the hot metal was poured, and it typically isn’t that pretty, Busby said. Metalworkers then take a hammer and chisel to remove the extra pieces and get the bust back into shape. They finish the process by using a blowtorch and spray gun to put a patina coating on the bust that gives it a distinctive shine, Busby said.

It generally takes him one to two months to craft the clay sculpture, depending on the availability of the family, and then two to three months to get the mold made and bronze melted and cast, he said. The whole process is about five months, he said.

Community effort

Busby pays the University of Alabama foundry to complete the process once he finishes the clay sculpture.

He believes he could complete up to two clay sculptures a month if he hires additional labor, but timing also will depend on the success of fundraising, he said.

Davis said Busby may not be the only one who will create the busts. Other sculptors and foundries in other parts of the state may be called upon to assist as well, he said.

Each bust costs about $11,500 to produce, including about $5,800 for the bust itself, $3,000 for a pedestal and installation and $1,200 for administrative and incidental costs, Davis said.

His task is to raise enough money to get them built, but he can’t do it alone, Davis said. The Vettes for Vets group has donated $4,000 in seed money, but Davis said his plan is to call on the fallen warriors’ communities and organizations within those communities to join in the project and help with fundraising.

The busts then could be displayed in a prominent place within each community, he said. 

He projects they’ll be able to do about 10 to 12 busts a year. “It’s not going to be done overnight,” he said. “It’s a big undertaking, but it’ll get done.”

Davis also is in talks with American Village in Montevallo about creating a monument where all 120 fallen service members from Alabama can be honored in one place. His conceptual idea is to have 120 10-foot-tall concrete columns (10 inches wide and 10 inches deep) standing in rows and columns, with three feet of the columns buried into the ground. On each column would be a giant dog tag with information about the deceased, and in the middle of the display would be an 80-foot-tall American flag, he said.

“All I’m doing is trying to remember all our veterans who have been killed, remember those who have served,” Davis said. “It’s just my heart.”