Grants Friendship Park near completion

Randy Hoffman cleans up a flower box at Friendship Park in Grants. Hoffman and other volunteers have planted 3,000 yellow Darwin tulips and are making other improvements to the park to help beautify Grants. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Jim Maniaci
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Two separate projects in Grants are combining beautification with honor at Friendship Park.

The new Vietnam Veterans Memorial is being installed as weather and time permit at Friendship Park, a narrow strip of land between Santa Fe Avenue (N.M. Route 117-Business Route 40-Historic Route 66) and the BNSF Railway tracks at the El Morro Road crossing just east of Exit 81-B on Interstate 40.

An anonymous donor paid the undisclosed price of a new Friendship Park sign, while three local couples their men all fought in the Vietnam have put up more than $25,000 for the Vietnam memorial.

A decade ago, Randy Hoffman, now a manager at the Chaco Travel Center in Milan, was working with the city, and approached then City Manager Cliff Spear about beautifying what was called the West End Park with flags. Eventually five flag poles were erected amid a grassy strip with some flowers, a sign and a group of service club emblems.

Hoffman was maintaining the median and a similar park-like area at the east end of Santa Fe Avenue as the city's horticulturist. That work except what the Grants Beautification Committee under the direction of Jamie Holton does is now maintained by a contract with OMI, the company that maintains all the medians in Grants.

"We called it Friendship Park because we live in a multi-cultural community," Hoffman said. He added, "We focused on Friendship as the name because we have such a potential for visitors to see our community when they come off the freeway; we are trying to make a good image for them."

In the spring, when 3,000 Darwin yellow tulips bloom in their brick planter boxes from the Beautification Committee, it certainly will catch their eye augmenting the new wall as a background to the two plaques of marble with their Vietnam messages, a simple and durable plaque with the five names, and benches for meditation in front of them.

Hugh Sheldrick indicated this week he expects there to be two dedications of the Vietnam memorial, the first in late March or early April for local residents and a bigger one in May during the annual motorcycle cavalcade to the big national Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C., during the yearly "Run to the Wall" in which the bikers stream from all corners of the country to the mall in the U.S. capital. The run is timed to conclude on Memorial Day when the country honors its military dead and those still missing in action.

Some of the concrete for the local monument was poured last week with more going in as soon as possible for the back wall. When the concrete sets, then the five flag poles be put up again.

Meanwhile, people interested in helping with beautification can contact Holton, Hoffman or City Hall.

— To contact reporter Jim Maniaci in Grants telephone 285-6184 or (505) 870-7775 (cellular).