Vietnam Veteran Skip Sparks Talks About the Origins of The Highground
Thursday, August 14th, 2014 -- 10:31 AM
-When I was at the opening ceremonies for the traveling wall exhibits at The Highground on Wednesday afternoon, I got to hear about the origins of The Highground.I spoke with Skip Sparks, a Vietnam Veteran, and he told me about how the idea for The Highground was started.
Skip said, "The Highground started on the battlefield in December of 1965. Tom Miller's friend, Jack, had been wounded in the throat with a large piece of shrapnel. Jack died in Tom's arms, never regaining consciousness."
"Tom made a silent promise that he would build a monument to the Vietnam veterans. Tom's vision was an acre or two of land, a flag pole and a few names. It took almost 20 years to build that monument."
"He went to the government, state officials who said 'we'll call you' and turned him back. He went to veteran's groups and, not all of them, but a few Word War II veterans said, 'we won our war, how come you didn't win yours?'"
"But, Tom was stubborn. He plugged on to get that done. And finally, he had one gentleman come on board with him. And Tom was just a young man; a struggling artist and he didn't have any money, but he kept pushing and pushing and he got another gentleman to come on board. He eventually got six more members, with eight gentleman total, but most of the money raised came out of Tom's pocket."
"He decided to ride around Wisconsin on a bicycle. There are a lot of people that ride around, but he rode around the perimeter of Wisconsin, 1,244 miles. One mile each for every American service man killed in Vietnam. This year's bike-a-thon raised almost $49,000. That's one of our biggest fundraisers. Ever since its inception, they've raised over $800,000 for The Highground."
Make sure you stop by The Highground this weekend to see the very moving traveling wall exhibits.
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