When Mike and Donna Thomas left Sonoma County last year for an unfamiliar town in the western foothills of Colusa County, little did they realize their new forever home was fate.
The couple were immediately welcomed by the community and Mike, who is a carpenter by trade, was immediately put to work.
he couple were commissioned by the Stonyford Museum to build the new memorial that honors the men and women who served or are serving in the U.S. military, which was dedicated on Saturday during the annual veterans ceremony and luncheon, hosted by the museum directors and volunteers.
“We were brought here by God,” said Donna.
Stonyford has long honored the county’s military service members. At the entrance of town stands a statue of Gen. Joseph Warren “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, who served in World War I and World War II and died in San Francisco in 1946.
The statue was a gift from Daniel and Robyn Lawson, with Friends and Veterans Support Groups, and positioned in 2006 with a plaque that reads, in part, “Many of our sons and daughters have fought for the freedoms that we enjoy today. All of them gave something by serving but some gave all with their lives.”
The statue, itself, was the sign that the couple were meant for Stonyford.
“Last year, I found out that Gen. Stilwell was my father’s commanding officer when he was in Merrill’s Marauders,” Donna said. “There is a reason why we are here.”
Merril’s Marauders was a special operations jungle warfare unit, which fought in the Southeast Asian theater (China-Burma-India, of World War II), and Donna’s father was just recently awarded the Gold Medal of Honor for his service.
When asked by then Stonyford Museum Director Penne Arbanasin to build the new veterans memorial, Mike Thomas jumped at the opportunity.
“It was really fun,” he said. “It came out better than we ever expected.”
The new outdoor memorial, located at the southeast corner of the museum, is a concrete and brick structure with five statues that represent branches of the military: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.
Thomas, who hand cut the brick stars, said it took about 10 hours to do the concrete work. The memorial was funded by the Premier Mushrooms Community Grant Program.
Placed above the memorial is a rustic American Flag, made by Maudry Smith, from reclaimed wood. The flag’s stars and stripes are painted red, white, and blue, which represents the very qualities that make this nation great: liberty, justice, freedom, love of country, and national purpose.
The dedication of the exhibit followed the Stonyford Museum’s annual ceremony to honor veterans, past and present.
Arbanasin, who started the tradition, was unable to attend, which left Museum Director Joyce Bond and Retired Marines Corporal Danny Lawson to lead the program inside the Stonyford Community Hall.
Bond read from a 1979 “This and That’’ column, written by the late Virginia Kizer and published in the Colusa Sun Herald, which, in part, reads, “To me, Veterans Day is a day to honor the men and women who served in the Armed Forces. Not those who gave their lives – we honor them on Memorial Day. But this is the day to honor those who gave a portion of their life – one or two, four or more years. Years they spend on army bases, aboard ships, in foreign countries, in battlefields, or in isolated outposts; time that wasn’t their own; time that was spent so that we (and they) could come back to America, a country of opportunity.”
Prior to the reading, Beth Mergogery sang “America the Beautiful.” Members of Colusa Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 2441, Maxwell American Legion Post No. 218, and Willows Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 1770 participated in the ceremony by serving as the honor guard.
The ceremony concluded with a three-round rifle volley and the playing of “Taps” by Zach Dennis.■