The Military Honor Park at the airport

1995 – today

A dream of a few, 1995: The county's newest memorial ground is its largest, and it grew the other way from the courthouse monument: not by appropriation but by accretion. The Military Honor Park and Museum stands at the main entrance of South Bend International Airport, and its mission, in the account the Battle of the Bulge Association carries, "is to recognize, acknowledge and pay tribute to all veterans, living and deceased, from each of the five military branches." It "began as a dream of a few in 1995." A mounted Lockheed RT-33 trainer jet marked the park's visual beginning; the design that followed is a pentagon for the five services, with five bronze service plaques and flags and a five-sided black granite monument at its heart.

The ground and the museum: Around the pentagon stand the machines: an AM General two-and-a-half-ton utility truck — South Bend's own Humvee-building tradition in its military form — an M60 Patton tank, an M42 "Duster" self-propelled gun, and a 155-millimeter howitzer. The Honor Park Museum holds artifacts of all five branches and of all the nation's conflicts. Among its monuments is a granite Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge Monument, dedicated in May 2011 with the financial assistance of the late Geza Csapo, a Bulge veteran of the 32nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, in the association's account. And here, since 2006, stands the Woman's Relief Corps' soldier of 1911, head recreated after three hundred hours of restoration, moved from City Cemetery in 2003 — the Grand Army generation's statue keeping company with the jets and armor of the generations after it. The park keeps its own site, honorpark.org, and its telephone, 574-232-4300, in the association's listing, and it is the ground where the county's all-service, all-conflicts remembrance now concentrates: everything the courthouse square says in granite for one war, the Honor Park says in equipment and flags for all of them.

Sources:

1. Battle of the Bulge Association, "Military Honor Park and Museum, So. Bend" (battleofthebulge.org) — the mission, the 1995 beginning, the RT-33 jet, the pentagon design and black granite monument, the equipment on display, the museum's scope, the Battle of the Bulge monument of May 2011 and Geza Csapo, and the park's contact record.
2. National Register nomination, South Bend City Cemetery — the Woman's Relief Corps statue's move to the Military Honor Park in 2003, its restoration in 2005 and installation in 2006.