Families United for our Troops and Their Mission: Oregon Memorial to Recent War Dead Runs Into Flak

re: from September 10, 2006, Los Angeles Times: "...As Oregon prepares to begin construction of the Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial here, some question whether it should be built while the fighting continues. Others find the memorial's scale daunting. And a panel of architects thinks it's ugly. / The project is the brainchild of Clay and M.J. Kesterson, who lost their son Erik, 29, an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq, in November 2003. / Clay says M.J. came up with the idea. "She was determined to make something positive happen . All I wanted at that point was to crawl in a hole somewhere." That "something" turned into years of fundraising, design meetings, collaborating with other military families and working with state government officials to create the memorial. / Designed by architect Jane Honbeck, a friend and neighbor of the Kestersons, the memorial consists of an oval pool with constantly moving water, lined with a stainless steel map of the world and an 8-foot bronze figure of a soldier down on one knee over the United States, with an arm outstretched. / It is to sit behind the Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs building, a quiet, park-like space five blocks from the Capitol. There are now four war memorials on the site: one dedicated to all Oregonians lost in battle, a monument to World War I, a monument to all servicemen and -women, and one dedicated to the Korean War. / In early June, the Fellows of the Portland Chapter of the American Institute of Architects sent a letter to Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, calling the monument "inappropriate and ill-conceived." It also expressed "dismay that the monument should be built while the conflict continues, and even as more Oregonians are being dispatched into the war zones." / The Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper, said in an Aug. 20 editorial that "it is dangerously presumptuous at best, and disrespectful to soldiers at worst, to memorialize a war before knowing how it ends." / Jim Willis, director of the state Department of Veterans' Affairs and a Vietnam vet, doesn't see it that way. / "The status, the state of the war isn't relevant to honoring these men and women, these Oregonians who made the ultimate sacrifice," Willis says..."...