A Tribute Before War's End
Started by One Va. Man, Memorial Is Intended to Honor Troops Now

By Theresa Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2006

The slash of black granite catches the eye, a 45,000-pound statement sitting there on the side of Route 28 in Manassas. Like a small echo of the Vietnam memorial before it, the seven-foot-high wall is dedicated to fallen troops.

But although most memorials come years, even decades, after the wars they represent, this one honors Americans who have -- and will -- die in Iraq and Afghanistan. And although most are commissioned, this one was started by one man.

"This is my contribution to this country," said Kevin Roustazad, 46. "This is my way of thanking this country for all it has given me."

The memorial evokes a tombstone erected before the dying lay dead. Something that seemingly comes too soon -- before the mourning can mend into memories.

To grasp the significance of this memorial in a region where monuments are commonplace, it is important to understand Roustazad. To understand how a 15-year-old boy who came from Iran alone -- and took jobs in kitchens where he could also find food -- came to be a businessman. To understand why his eyes sometimes water when he talks about America.

Roustazad has created the memorial beside his business and against a backdrop of constant commuter traffic. By Memorial Day, he hopes to find a permanent home for it, then start the etching. The face of each serviceman and woman killed will be depicted in porcelain with biographical information written in the stone underneath. The wall, 25 feet long, has room for 5,600 faces. As of yesterday, the total number of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts was 2,653, according to the Pentagon. More stones can be added to the wall if needed.

"If you go to the Vietnam memorial, you see a wall of Smiths, a wall of Joneses," Roustazad said. On this wall, you will see your Jones, be able to recognize your Smith. "So when you come, you will have a connection."

The monument will cost about $400,000 to finish, paid in part out of Roustazad's pocket and from a fund that has been started. The plan is to call it Silent Thunder Memorial for Freedom, in reference to Rolling Thunder, the Memorial Day ride by thousands of motorcyclists through the District. The hope is to have bicyclists come to Silent Thunder.

"You don't need the motorcycles," Roustazad said. "You will have the faces that will be loud enough. They will be the thunder from within."

On a recent Sunday in Manassas, about 50 people gathered outside Eastern Memorials, which is owned by Roustazad and Andy Del Gallo, a stone carver whose mother is German and father Italian. Uniformed men and women, a mix of active duty and veterans, stood hand-to-forehead in a salute to the raising of the U.S. flag as taps played. It was a scaled-down version of a grand ceremony. A car alarm sounded through half of it, and the speakers' voices competed with the wind and traffic.

National Guard member Alith Saengchanh, 19, had volunteered a day earlier to participate when he was told there was a local effort to honor troops.

"I would rather recognize them now than 20 years down the road," he said.

Lester Lauber, 68, a Vietnam War veteran, said he knows what it's like to come home tired from war without any recognition. Or worse, amid antagonism.

"In Oakland, it was a mess when we landed," he said. "We really were in disgrace."

The antiwar sentiments are not gone, only tempered, Lauber said. He visited a Woodbridge high school recently, and "a little girl asked me how I liked shooting babies," he said, wincing. "All wars have been fought man to man, uniform to uniform. [In Iraq], you are dealing with a war where people aren't in uniform. It was the same in Vietnam."

Lauber offered to help Roustazad organize the ceremony to give the project momentum.

"Why does it take a person from another country to build a wall?" Lauber said, adding that he didn't mean that as an insult to Roustazad. "He's probably more American than my own son. He's probably more American than most of us."

It would be a cliche and inaccurate to say Roustazad came for the American dream, because at 15, he didn't even know there was one, he said. Unlike many immigrants, he didn't come from poverty seeking wealth. His family was well-off in Iran, he said, and he left to attend boarding school. That lasted about a year.

"After that, we had the revolution, and I was on my own," he said.

Of that time in his life, he gives few details and only after much prodding. ("I'm a nobody. It's not about me," he said.) Roustazad said he worked as a dishwasher in restaurants so he could count on steady meals. He then found work as a mechanic on cars and aviation parts. He entered the memorial business 7 1/2 years ago after realizing the need for tombstones in foreign languages.

"No other country, believe me, there is no other country that will give you this," Roustazad said of his opportunities.

He grabbed his graying ponytail and held it up as an example of something he has here but wouldn't in Iran. "I can have a ponytail and still go to a meeting of pretty prominent people, and they still welcome me," he said.

Del Gallo, 40, said that when Roustazad came to him with the idea, "there were many heated discussions." Politically, the two are a spectrum apart, with Del Gallo supporting the war in Iraq and Roustazad an adamant opponent. And the political overtones of the project were evident from the beginning.

So, Del Gallo said, the two focused on the one issue that they and most Americans seemed to agree on: the troops.

"We found a way to put our political baggage at the door," Del Gallo said. "I think the goal is to try to create the environment where people can do the same."

They also agreed that the memorial needed to be done now, before the war ends.

"It's a place for these soldiers to come back to -- to right now have a place to do this," Del Gallo said. "They have names and faces, and here they are. . . . They aren't just numbers and blips on the television."

Roustazad said he would like the memorial to stay in Manassas, and at the ceremony, Mayor Douglas S. Waldron (R) promised to do what he could to help. "It's very fitting to me . . . that the effort for this would take place in Manassas," Waldron said. "The first death in Afghanistan was a person from Manassas."

CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann, 32, of Manassas Park was killed Nov. 25, 2001, in an uprising by Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners in northern Afghanistan.

As he stood before the smooth black stones, Waldron said he knew they weren't blank. "I know there are names that are waiting to be engraved on this," he said.

When it was Roustazad's turn to speak, he uttered only a few sentences, mostly offering his thanks. He then held up a pin that a Marine had given him after hearing about the memorial. The Marine told Roustazad that he'd taken it off a soldier of Saddam Hussein's elite guard whom he had shot.

"By passing over that pin to me, he handed over his conscience to me and his nightmares to me," Roustazad said, his voice raspy with emotion. "In my opinion, this is the most important thing about this memorial." That it will be there for those who come home as well as those who don't.