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• “Walking past name after name after name will give us one way to see the human cost of the war”

  Ellen Rogers

  MFA Student

By SUE WUETCHER

Published: June 2, 2010

Ellen Rogers says that for people with no direct connection to the military, it’s easy to forget about the fighting far away in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Yet, nearly 5,500 U.S. military men and women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan,” says the MFA student in the Department of Visual Studies. “How can we begin to understand a loss of this magnitude?” 

So for the third consecutive year, Rogers put together a Memorial Day public art performance that remembers and honors the American military personnel who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan during the last seven years.

Rogers and a team of volunteers spent a good portion of the day on Monday writing the names of all military personnel who have died in the conflicts in the two countries in red, white and blue chalk on the sidewalk in Founders Plaza on the North Campus.

Rogers says the purpose of the project, titled “Remembering Our Fallen,” was “to honor the U.S. casualties in a public place, to remind all of us that the soldiers and their families’ sacrifices are huge and on-going. I hope people will pause to look at the vast sea of names, knowing that each represents a person lost and a family devastated.

“Walking past name after name after name will give us one way to see the human cost of the war,” Rogers explains.

The names were to be left on the sidewalk to fade with time and weather. Monday night’s heavy rain speeded up the process, however. As of Tuesday afternoon, all that remained were some signage and a few piles of chalk.