'It's a place of joy'

For most of her life, the small city of Sheridan, Ark., represented pain and death to Paula Corrado. It was there that a B-17F carrying Corrado’s father and eight other U.S. Army Air Forces crew members crashed in March 1943, killing all of them.

But thanks to the work of American Legion Finis Gallion Post 30 and others in the Sheridan community, the crash site now represents much more to Corrado. An effort spearheaded by the post created a memorial to the crew of the Flying Fortress, as well as all those Grant County residents killed in action from World War I to the Vietnam War.

“It was a place I never wanted to go (to),” Corrado said of Sheridan, where her father, Tech Sgt. Peter Ivanovich, died on March 12, 1943. “It was a scary place. It was a sad place that I wouldn’t have gone to. I had been a flight attendant and I’d say, ‘I’m not going even to Little Rock.’”

But Corrado’s feelings began to change when she found out about Post 30’s plans – and profoundly changed when she got to the site. “I feel like my dad and his crew are alive in the heart,” she said. “It’s a place of joy. It’s a wonderful celebration of their lives and their sacrifice. I don’t feel death. I feel life. I cried with joy.

“It was and is a place that gives me serenity. It’s a place that I know is blessed ground. It’s a place I know will never be forgotten. This beautiful memorial is saying, ‘You’ll forever be remembered.’ My Papa Pete used to say to me, ‘Paula, there’s always a rainbow, even in the tear.' That place has put the rainbow in my tears.”

The American Legion B-17 Veterans Memorial Park, located on land owned by Post 30, features a life-size replica of the plane, a 33-foot-wide covered black granite wall with photos and information on the plane’s crew, the crash site’s original memorial and a plaque honoring a Boy Scout who had cleaned up the area in 1984, two walls honoring the county’s KIAs up to the Vietnam War, and two markers honoring Union and Confederate soldiers killed during the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry.

Red bricks form a path around the memorial, while flowers and well-manicured grass give the site a feeling of peace and healing. Mounted around the memorial are the U.S. flag, the POW-MIA flag, the Arkansas state flag and the nine flags from the states where each of the men killed in the crash had lived.

The original monument to the men killed was erected in 1944, but the swampy area around it had caused the memorial to be forgotten by most. A local Boy Scout, Jerry Jackson, made it his Eagle Scout project to clean up the area around the memorial in the mid-'80s.

But in 2010, two World War II veterans – Dr. Curtis Clark and Floyd Aldridge – came upon the original memorial and saw it just sitting in the middle of a swamp at a tilt. “Floyd said, ‘This is not right,’ very vocally and emphatically,” Post 30 Commander Gary Kelley said. “That started an idea of doing something else. It kept growing.”

Kelley said those two Legionnaires and fellow Legionnaire Fred Puckett were the first to have the vision for revamping the memorial. According to Post 30 Historian Nelson Mears, the three were responsible for the post purchasing the acre on which the memorial resided.

The post then started applying for state grants to start the funding process, as well as reaching out to local businesses and individuals for assistance. Disabled American Veterans Chapter 56 in Sheridan got involved and raised funds for the project.

Mears was tasked with coming up with a design for the memorial, despite having no architectural background. He credits a higher power for coming up with the design. “I think the Lord supplied the vision and used us,” he said.

The original vision for the memorial, Mears said, was on a much smaller scale. “We wanted to honor the veterans killed in the plane,” he said. “None of us knew anything about the nine boys on the plane. As we found out more and more about the history and got to know the guys, we wanted to do more.”

Much of the materials used to fill the swamp area – 300-something dump trucks loads – were donated by Sheridan White Rock and Arkansas Decorative Stone. And Acme Brick donated close to 20,000 bricks for the construction. Another business provided free of charge metal panels for construction of the plane.

Most of the labor on the memorial was provided by trustees from the Sheridan Detention Center through efforts by Grant County Sheriff Ray Vance. “They were out here from daybreak until dark pretty much seven days a week for about a year and a half,” Mears said. “They did all the brick work. They built the plane.”

“If this were contracted out from the way it was to today, it would have cost more than $1 million to say, ‘Hey, design this, come up with a plan’ and include all the labor and materials. Nearly everything you see here is donated.

“The grants totaled about $47,000, and there about another $50,000 raised. That’s what built this park – that and the free labor.”

“Sometimes it was beg, borrow and almost steal,” Kelley said with a laugh.

The memorial was dedicated in 2015, with a ceremony that included relatives of the crew. Kelley said family members who come to the site are “overwhelmed.”

Being able to provide that type of experience brings up strong emotions for Kelley. “There are times when I come out here … I’ll get out of my truck and just stand and look,” he said, his voice breaking. “A group of motorcycle riders came in one day. They were Vietnam era. One of them had a long beard and pony tail pulled back, the jacket with the sleeves cut out, the patches on it that kind of gave you the indication he wasn’t afraid to get into a scuffle.

“When he stood over there about where the end of the fence is, I just happened to walk and he was standing there with tears running down his cheeks. Here was a guy who looked like he’d walk halfway across the county to get into a barroom brawl, and he was sitting there crying.”

Mears has seen similar reactions. “I remember seeing a couple of grown men crying when we put the flags up,” he said. “What really impacts you is when you see cars pull in here with old World War II guys and Korean and Vietnam (veterans), and they get out of their car and they start crying. They do that because they realize that they’re not forgotten.”

The plane, which had taken off from Salina, Kan., en route to West Palm Beach, Fla., included Ivanovich, 2nd Lt. George H. Davis, 2nd Lt. Robert V. Turchette, 2nd Lt. Leo E. Dolan, 2nd Lt. Phillip E. Niewolak, Tech. Sgt. Dewitt H. Tyler, Staff Sgt. Arthur N. Potter, Staff Sgt. David G. Secorski and Staff Sgt. Kenneth D. Cain. None of the members were over the age of 25.

“You say, ‘Please God, let me know it’s worth it … and then let me know that someone’s always going to remember them,’” Corrado said. “That’s what the B-17 Memorial and The American Legion have done.

“In those black granites, you can see the reflection of your face in each of them. It’s a reminder that they did it for us.”

For more information about the B-17 Memorial, click here.