Wild Blue Yonder

The United States Air Force finally gets its very own memorial. In a dedication ceremony yesterday, the soaring structure was dedicated by dignitaries and former and current Air Force personnel from all ranks. The Air Force has been a separate service for nearly sixty years now, so it is about time they had their own place to honor 54,000 of their personnel killed in action.

Under a blue sky pierced by a triumvirate of curved spires soaring more than 200 feet in the air, thousands of veterans and family members armed with well-traveled war stories came to an Arlington promontory and a Pentagon parking lot for the dedication and official unveiling of the U.S. Air Force Memorial. For the Air Force, which had been the only military branch not to have its own Washington memorial, the dedication completed nearly 15 years of effort to build a monument in the capital region to more than 54,000 airmen killed in action.

The dedication ceremony, which included speeches by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, came nearly 60 years after the Air Force's creation as a separate service. Up by the memorial, hundreds of VIPs joined current and retired Air Force brass underneath the dizzying monument. They milled about its wide base, read inscriptions on adjacent granite walls, heard from dignitaries and watched the U.S. Air Force Band and Honor Guard perform.

Down by the Pentagon's parking lot, where the jutting spires could be seen in the distance, other former airmen and their relatives toured military aircraft and visited information booths. Mostly, they ambled around, sharing old stories filled with talk of B-29s or C-141s and reminiscing about the mundane tasks they just happened to perform on historic days.

Seaton Phelps, 84, from Edenton, N.C., sat in the parking lot in a back row seat, facing the distant memorial. He was part of the Air Force's predecessor, the Army Air Corps. He served in England during World War II.

"I helped prepare the planes for the paratroops on D-Day," he said. "We didn't know what was going to happen. We just helped get the planes ready — C-4 gliders and C-47s."

When asked what he thought of the memorial, he smiled. "I don't know how to express it," he said. "It's just nice."

Ross Perot, Jr., son of the one-time presidential candidate, chaired the committee that worked to get the $30 million structure built. Here is the website for the firm that designed it.