The 15th annual War Memorial Ceremony at San Diego State equally looked to the past and the future, honoring the passing of the Alumni Association’s Veterans War Memorial Committee’s previous chairman while also revealing plans for an expansion of the war memorial.
The SDSU war memorial was commissioned in 1996 to honor former SDSU students and alumni who died in the field of battle during a war.
It was retired U.S. Coast Guard and Vietnam War veteran Henry Mann’s first time attending the war memorial ceremony. He said the treatment of war veterans has improved since he was a student at SDSU.
“I came here as a veteran,” Mann said. “It was a little different. We just kind of fit in. It’s nice to see that they’re honoring people who’ve served here.”
The ceremony was dedicated to the memory of the committee’s former chairman, Jim Erkenbeck, who suffered from a stroke this year. Erkenbeck’s wife, Jocelyne Erkenbeck, recited a poem in his memory as the microphone slightly shook as she held it in her right hand.
“Jim was a wonderful man,” current chairman Thomas Richards said. “He set the standard for the ceremony. I’m just following in his footsteps.”
During the ceremony, Richards introduced plans to expand the war memorial. Richards said the plans are to create a semicircular courtyard around the memorial, with benches etched with the names of SDSU students and alumni who recently died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as recently discovered names missing in the original memorial.
Richards said the war memorial committee does extensive research to find all the names of SDSU students and alumni who have died in war, but it is not always easy.
“There’s no requirement for a family to report back to the school that an alum has passed away,” Richards said. “If nobody informs the school, the school doesn’t know.”
This year’s ceremony, which generally happens on the Aztec Green in front of the war memorial, was instead held near the SDSU Transit Center because of the construction of the new Aztec Center.
