At its meeting last month, Chesterfield County Council approved a construction bid awarding $64,623 to DAP Contracting of Monroe, NC. County Administrator Michelle Stanley had presented the bid during the staff submission segment of the meeting.

Funding for the project comes from a $50,000 grant from the SC Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism, and a $10,000 grant from Duke Energy Foundation, while the county’s state accommodation tax money will cover the remainder, some $10,000-$12,000, according to Stanley. Part of SC Code of Laws Title 12, the state applies a 2% charge on accommodations statewide, and the money goes back to municipalities, which can then use the funds toward local tourism.

The veterans park will be located off the southeastern corner of the courthouse, 200 W. Main St., Chesterfield. Stanley said in an interview that flagpoles currently flying flags of the armed services would be relocated from across Main Street to the new park. The project also involves moving the existing veterans monument, and installing flagpole lighting, new sidewalks, shrubbery and some benches, as well as laying sod. “We might get more benches if there is money left over,” she said.

Stanley said, “Local veterans groups had asked if they could put a veterans park in our courtyard. They already have a Veterans Day ceremony out there every year, so they just want to make it look more presentable.”

She said those groups had been working on the project with her predecessor Timothy Eubanks, who had retired in July. “I’ve been helping them ever since,” Stanley said.

“Nathan Gardner designed the whole project ... [he] is what I’d call the project manager,” she said.

Gardner is vice commander of American Legion Post 74, Chesterfield. He had served active duty in the US Army for 13 years and is currently in the Army Reserve. He said in a phone interview that members from local veterans groups — including his own post, the county chapter of Disabled American Veterans, and local Veterans Services Organization — “serve on a veterans advisory council for the county. I think that’s where the idea of the project came about ... I just happened to have a background for construction and engineering. When we were brainstorming about what we were trying to do, I volunteered to sketch it up and get on paper something that could be bid out.”

The project has been in the works for about three years, having taken on different shapes, according to Gardner, who added, “At one time, there would have been a continuous wall about 300 feet long.”

Then, late last year, the project hit a different kind of wall. According to Stanley, “We bid it out last October or so. The bids had come in, and they were so high ... We had six bidders that first time.”

The lowest bid had come in at more than $170,000, the sticking point being the memorial wall. “We just didn’t have that much funding, so the veterans had to back up and punt again and shrink it down,” Stanley said. “It’s still basically the same as it was before. We just had to take out the wall, because it was going to cost so much.”

Stanley said she had reached out to the towns in Chesterfield County to try to drum up material support for the project, but “none of them were willing to put any money in.”

She had told Gardner then that the county could help out for no more than $15,000. She advised him to reject the bids and downsize the project. The county then rebid the project in January. Three contractors had shown up, but only DAP actually bid on it, according to Stanley.

She said state Rep. Richard “Richie” Yow — District 53, Chesterfield — “had a lot to do with” getting Parks, Recreation and Tourism to greenlight the grant.

Stanley added, “Then, Duke Energy approached me saying they might have some money for beautification, and did we have any need? And I said, ‘Yes we do. We’re making a veterans park,’ and they said that would qualify for it.”

Stanley said she had sealed that deal in December. However, she credits the veterans for the project. “Nathan Gardner, Tommy Demby and Richie Yow were the three main ones who got it started,” she said.

Yow said in a phone interview that, for his part, securing funding from the Park and Recreation Development Fund took “about 10 minutes. It was all done through the Chesterfield County Legislative Delegation.”

The PARD Fund is “a state-funded, noncompetitive, reimbursable grant program for eligible local governments or special purpose district entities which provide recreational opportunities within each county,” according to the state Parks, Recreation and Tourism website. The fund is an 80-20 match program that helps develop new public recreation facilities or augment existing ones.

Yow, who had retired from the US Air Force, said that the addition of sidewalks would make the park, particularly the monument, accessible to people in wheelchairs. “The memorial has been there forever, but when they added on to the courthouse, you can’t get to it,” he said. “We’re just trying to get it to where families can get to the memorial to place flowers, which they have not been able to do the last few years.”

Tommy Demby, the finance officer of American Legion Post 74, said in a phone interview that they are trying to give everyone access to the monument, upon which names of veterans of the World Wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War are engraved. He said, “It was Richie’s original idea to see what we could do to get it going again, to see if we could find funding for it and to see if we could make it a reality.

“Nathan and I, we kind of assist each other trying to get it off the ground ... We’ve pretty much done all the groundwork for it: All the layouts, put together the plans, met with contractors, been involved with the planning process with the county.”

According to Demby, towns such as Cheraw and Pageland have their own veteran memorials, but the county itself does not. “This will be a countywide memorial, not just for Chesterfield,” he said. “It will be for everybody.”

Gardner said he expects construction will take two to four weeks, weather permitting.

Michelle Stanley said she hopes the veterans park will be ready in time for Veterans Day. “It’s really going to be pretty,” she said.

Demby had served in the Army for 24 years, having retired in 2021. “Hopefully, this is only the first phase,” he says, adding that they will continue working to move the project forward. He says the group’s main goal right now is to finish this construction and then go on to raise more money to actually build the memorial wall.

"We’re just a bunch of old combat veterans who don’t give up easy,” he said.