PapillionBusinesses.com is here at the Nebraska Vietnam Veteran Memorial, a state memorial, with Tom Brown (President) and Ron Elwell (Executive Director) of the Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation.

Please tell me about the project and anything you’d like to add. I’ll have some questions in between, but I find it’s usually better if you just go for it because you’ve got the heart to tell it.

(Part One is with Tom Brown)

This project started back in October of 2017.

A group of Vietnam veterans got together and wanted to do some sort of remembrance for the Vietnam veteran and there are other memorials in the state, but they are from multiple conflicts, where this one is just dedicated to the Vietnam War, to the Vietnam veterans.

We started in 2018 to get information on fundraising and things like that. We met with the architect, who is Don Prochaska and Associates, and they came up with the original drawings and the thought process for the whole memorial. Then they made a presentation to the Vietnam veterans, and everybody thought that was great and approved of it at that time.

And then in 2018 we actually formed a nonprofit corporation of 501 (c) (3), and that was approved in the summer 2019. And then we started raising funds for the memorial. And then in 2020, we came up with the pandemic and that pretty well put a stop to all fundraising, unfortunately, because you aren’t allowed to have meetings and were not having any veteran meetings. Most of the companies that you’re soliciting funds from are holding their money for their employees because they’ve got to figure out what they’re going to do and who they’re paying, [who] is not working, but they want to keep them, so you know, things like, yeah . . .

It was a very uncertain time for everything . . .

For everything. And so, we still solicited funds and stuff like that, but 2021 is when that overall scare got over with. Fundraising started to pick up. We, at that time, had hired a professional fundraiser. He gave us some guidance on raising money and all the intricacies of raising money.

It’s a lot different than just going out and asking somebody for some money at a cake sale or something where you’re asking people for $50,000 or $100,000 or $150,000. We incorporated some help from different people.

One of the groups that we worked with was Bellevue University. Lisa Jorgensen joined the group with us. We had a tremendous amount of support from Bellevue University and we needed to get a web page worked with us, taking care of us with project professionals who do web pages. That was tremendous support.

For help locating this site was the Mayor David Black, the mayor of Papillion. He was very, very helpful and instrumental in giving us a choice of different locations. And we had numerous meetings with him at his office and he offered to us if you have an engineering problem, talk to my engineers or go to my PR people. Just a lot of good support from him and from [the] University. Without those two, I’m not really sure how well we would have done. You know, you need that type of support.

Fundraising really got going in 2022. Very fortunate. At that time, we had set up an honorary committee,

Thank you.

And it was not so much getting funds from them, it was more the people that they knew and had contacts with. We had people like Chuck Hagel, the former Secretary [of Defense], Bob Kerry, Congressional Medal [of Honor] recipient, Hal Daub, former mayor, things like that. We had, I think, 14 or 15 members. Get the list.

That really helped to get fundraising going. We made all kinds of personal appearances to Rotaries, to other veteran organizations.

There was some like the American Legion did a challenge and they challenged all the other American Legions in the state of Nebraska to donate money. That was very, very successful. And the VFW did the same thing. So, it got to be one of these things that everybody kind of started to hear about what was going on.

How much did it cost?

Approximately, seven and a half million dollars. Originally, its budget was three point six. And then after the pandemic, everything went up in cost and it went to a little bit over 5 million and by the time it was all said and done at the end of seven years, it was about seven and a half million.

How did you end up? You talked a little bit about it.

One on one. Meeting the people. We had all kinds of meetings and groups that we had some of our members were doing presentations to different groups. Other VFWs, other Vietnam veteran groups, all kinds.

We went down to Lincoln [and] did a presentation to the Lincoln Rotary. And we went to the Rotary in Bellevue.

It’s a lot of presentations, one on one. A lot of calling on people and having people that know people and making connections for us, so that we can make a presentation to their group. A lot of the companies had organizations inside of their company, you know, and we would make presentations to them and that group would make a donation and a lot of times that company would donate also. So, we had a lot of good support from so many different companies,

We’re going to have a banner up here on all the companies that have made contributions.

(To be continued)

Come and see the Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial for yourself at the ceremony on 6 June!

Get tickets and learn more here:
https://nvvmf.org/

Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial
11691 South 108th Street
Papillion NE, 68046