Frozen GI - Rutland County Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Rutland, Vermont
This unusual memorial to Vietnam vets caught our eye as we breezed through town. A helmeted soldier lay face up and frozen -- half-in, half-out of a block of marble -- like the carbonized Han Solo at the end of The Empire Strikes Back [see the West Coast War Dog Memorial] , or a knight's tomb as in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
No one is buried there. The sculpture was started by John Reno, a local Vietnam Vet, in 1981. But John suffered bouts of depression, and died in a boating accident in 1982. The unfinished sculpture was dumped into the Castleton gravel pit. That's where it was discovered by John Bergeron, another Vietnam Vet, who completed the tribute in 1995.