Too many names crowd this wall

SEATTLE – At the Garden of Remembrance in downtown Seattle, worker Randy Mitchell sandblasted the names of 29 more Washington servicemen and servicewomen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan onto the war memorial.

Mitchell, 49, works for Quiring Monuments, and so this is what he does every day: Carve the names of the dead into stone.

After adding the names – beginning with Corey J. Aultz, who was born in Port Orchard and died at 31 when a bomb exploded near his armored vehicle in Ramadi, Iraq – Mitchell returned Wednesday to his work on gravestones.

But inscribing more names on the memorial wall at the Garden of Remembrance will be difficult. There already are more than 8,000 names, the main panels are filled, and the dead from two conflicts – in Iraq and Afghanistan – must be accommodated.

Then there’s the painstaking work involved: about five hours per series of names.

First, the names are printed on thin strips of rubber and glued to the wall, then Mitchell and co-worker Daniel Gamboa, 28, cut the letters out with a precise, thin knife to make stencils. Wearing a mask, Mitchell sandblasts the stencils, carving an imprint of the names on the wall.

After a while, the names he etches run together, said Mitchell. But there’s something about carving the names of police officers, which he added to a memorial in Olympia in 2006, and servicemen and women, he said.

Maybe because they died in service. Maybe because many die young.

“I wish there weren’t so many,” he said Wednesday.

The wall at the Garden of Remembrance is near a fountain and trees – a respite from busy Second Avenue steps away. But even here the politics of war and the growing list of casualties are taking a toll.

The wall, which runs most of the length of Second Avenue behind Benaroya Hall, is made up of a series of panels. The names of those who died in World War II cover 12 panels and part of a 13th; the Korean War’s casualties cover a little more than one panel, and the Vietnam War, three panels.

When the memorial debuted on July 4, 1998, those killed in the two most recent conflicts – the invasion of Grenada and the first Gulf War – were on one panel.

There are signs that there was optimism that there would be no more casualties of war, yet resignation that more could die: No blank panels remained on the wall when the memorial opened, but three others were left blank on the other side of the garden, behind the memorial wall.

When more began dying in Iraq in 2003, the first Washington casualty listed alphabetically, Michael R. Adams, simply was put next to the last name listed from the first Gulf War, John Kendall Morgan, which is above a quotation from a soldier’s letter home.

On Wednesday, there was room for only one more line of names above the inscription, then the rest were stenciled below.

A few more lines still could fit on the panel, and there are other panels with quotes, where more names could be added.

But Dave Barber, a Vietnam veteran who serves on an advisory committee to the city, which owns the garden, said, “We don’t know how much longer this will go on.”

More names could be put on the blank panels at the back of the garden. But they might be seen as taking a back seat, Barber said.

More complex, Barber said, is how to group soldiers. Those killed in Afghanistan are mixed in with those killed in Iraq. Barber said that troubles many in the group since the wars have different aims.

Barber searches newspapers for obituaries of soldiers from Washington killed in Iraq. He contacts their families and makes sure the names belong on the wall.

Some families he speaks with are angry about the war; others support it.

All are mourning. He doesn’t want to take sides.