SHERIDAN -- It's debatable whether any worthwhile patriotism is involved in standing while the national anthem plays. But genuine respect for our country and its defenders is clearly on display in a clearing along a rural Grant County roadway.
Sheridan B-17 Memorial Park's most eye-catching feature is a full-size model of a Flying Fortress like the Boeing bomber No. 42-29532 that crashed at the site on March 12, 1943. All nine crew members, none of them Arkansans, were killed.
Dedicated last fall six miles north of the Grant County seat, the memorial honors those casualties by name, while also paying tribute to the area's military dead as far back as the Civil War.
World War II was raging when the B-17 went down on its way from an airfield in Kansas to another in Florida. That was one leg of its intended route to England and the bombing campaign against Nazi Germany.
As detailed on the park's internet site, the plane was heard flying low with sputtering engines near Sheridan before it nosedived into a grove of trees around 3:30 p.m.
In a particularly poignant touch, radio operator Peter Ivanovich tied one of his dog tags, his rosary and a miniature deck of playing cards into a red handkerchief. He evidently threw the package from the aircraft moments before the crash, to be recovered later by a nearby resident and eventually mailed to the dead airman's mother in Arizona.
A monument was placed at the site in 1944. As the years went by, debris from the crash was found with help of a metal detector. Those artifacts were given to the Grant County Museum, but the tragedy had faded from local memory by the 1980s, when a S̶h̶e̶r̶i̶d̶a̶n̶ Benton* Boy Scout organized a refurbishing of the original memorial along County Road 51.
Time passed until members of Sheridan American Legion Post 30 and Sheridan Disabled American Veterans Chapter 56 decided five years ago to erect the substantial memorial that now greets visitors.
Led by Nelson Mears, Grant County's Veterans Service officer, the volunteers obtained nearly $45,000 in government grants to buy the one-acre crash site and begin construction. Private donations have been substantial.
The veterans got help from prisoners at Grant County's jail to build the full-size B-17 model from wood and metal, including thousands of rivets. Enclosing the plane is a black metal fence capped by gilded fleurs-de-lis. Visitors enter the memorial through a stone archway and pass the 1944 marker.
Behind the aircraft, a black granite wall bears the names of the nine who died. On flanking walls are listed Grant County fatalities from 20th-century wars: 11 names from World War I, 49 from World War II, two from Korea and seven from Vietnam. Near the memorial's entrance, separate markers honor Union and Confederate troops who died nearby in the 1864 Battle of Jenkins' Ferry.
According to the memorial's website, the Army Air Force investigation after the crash placed most of the blame on pilot error and stormy weather. But research by the Grant County veterans has led them to believe that the B-17 was in bad repair and should not have been flying that day.
Given the passage of time, cause of the accident is unlikely to be further determined. But it is unquestionable that the memorial speaks of true patriotic sacrifice and a fitting way to honor it.
That sentiment is conveyed on the 1944 marker, in an inscription taken from a British poem of World War I -- but true for all who've given their lives for their fellow countrymen: "At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them."
Sheridan B-17 Memorial Park can be visited daily. To reach the site from Little Rock, take Interstate 530 south to U.S. 167 (Exit 10). Go southwest on U.S. 167. At the Grant County line, turn right on Grant County Road 53. Head south to Ico and turn right on Grant County Road 52. At Grant County Road 51, turn left and continue to the memorial park on the left side of the road.
For more information, visit b17memorialpark.com or call (501) 425-1827.
Style on 09/20/2016
*CORRECTION: Boy Scout Jerry Jackson of Benton organized the refurbishing of a memorial honoring nine people killed in a World War II B-17 crash in Sheridan. This story incorrectly stated where Jackson lived.