Vet aims to build memorial
George Eshleman is going to cycle coast to coast, and then north to Maine, in order to raise money.
KCaulder@CalhounTimes.com
Local Army veteran George Eshleman will embark on a 126-day, 5,659-mile bike ride across the United States starting Dec. 18 in an effort to raise both awareness of veteran issues and money build the nation’s largest veteran memorial in Gordon County.
Eshleman hopes to build the memorial on 160 acres in Gordon County that sits just 2 miles from the Battle of Adairsville and was once owned by a Civil War veteran. The Unified Warrior Foundation, a nonprofit he started in September of 2015, has currently offered $805,000 for the property. He hopes to pay for it through funds raised during his bike ride.
The journey will begin in San Diego, California,
and ride east along what is known as the Southern Tier Route, a 3,047.2-mile course to St. Augustine, Florida. He will then turn north on a 2,611.8-mile Atlantic Coast Route that will end in Millinocket, Maine. His hope is that those who decide to participate in the fundraiser will donate one cent for every mile he travels.
“That $805,000 sounds like a lot of money, but broken down it’s around 700 people per state giving $56 in the 20 states we go through. It’s not a whole lot of people,” Eshleman said. “On
MEMORIAL,
average, Americans don’t know where $76.83 a month of our money goes. It just disappears. So, we’re asking people to instead donate that ‘disappearing’ money to us.”
If all goes according to plan, the memorial will feature an eight-acre memorial shaped like an awareness ribbon, a 54acre retreat complex, a 5-acre garden from which food would be donated to the local community, three statues sculpted to look like veterans who took their own lives, a Koi fish pond, and 85,000 bricks representing soldiers from nine major conflicts since World War I. Of those bricks, 33,000 will be red in color to represent veterans who have lost their lives to suicide.
“When people walk in, they’ll see the impact. That’s only 3.5 years of suicide, and it doesn’t reflect civilian suicide at all, which is three times as many,” Eshleman said.
The retreat complex will feature eight cabins where veterans and family can spend 10 days learning new techniques and methods for managing PTSD, a confidence obstacle course, three ziplines, three outdoor firepits, a hall for serving meals, an outdoor kitchen area, a 25-foot observation deck with telescopes, six miniature jumping goats, two therapy service dogs, four off-road vehicles, 2.5 miles of hiking trails and a playground.
“Our hope is that veterans will use the retreat complex, but that students can come use it for field trips and things like that as well. We will teach them what it means to believe in yourself more than anyone else believes in you and to understand that if you believe something about yourself, that’s what matters,” he said.
The total cost of purchasing the property and building all of the amenities, according to Eshleman, will be approximately $1.8 million. At that price point, it would clock in as one of the most inexpensively-constructed memorials in the nation.
“That’s pretty good when you consider that the World War II memorial in D.C. cost $38 million. The cheapest memorial ever built of this size was $27 million,” he said. “We’re getting ours done at a tenth of the cost because construction companies are donating experience. Supervisors are coming to help oversee things, and only veterans will do work on the memorial. They’re all volunteers who want to do it, so we have literally no labor costs. It will be a memorial made for, built for and built by veterans.”
On the trail
In 2015, Eshleman made the decision to hike the Appalachian Trail for the very first time. He had never done much hiking outside of what was necessary in the military and had not trained at all for the 2,181-mile journey ahead. Still, he pushed forward. He reached out to families of veterans who had committed suicide and requested that they send him their names. He received 219, which he had embroidered on militarystyle name tapes. He planned to carry them with him as he hiked so that he could feel the support of his brothers-inarms during the trip.
No one knew then that he had no plans to return home.
“They didn’t know my plan was to go on the trail and commit suicide. Two days after I started, I sat behind a tree and prepared to do it. There’s still a pistol buried near that tree. There is one bullet in it, and I was ready to go,” he said. “The name tapes saved me. I looked down and I thought, ‘I can’t do that to all these people.’”
So, he kept hiking. Every time he thought he might want to stop, he looked at the name tapes. Every time he thought about his earlier plan, he looked at the name tapes. He said he felt as if his fellow soldiers were with him, encouraging him to carry on and keep going. It became easier as he met more and more people on the trail, including a 12-year-old boy whose trail-name, a nickname given to him on the trail by another hiker, was Bug.
When Bug learned about the name tapes and Eshleman’s new plan — to finish the hike in their honor — he started to tell him about his mother, a former Marine who passed away when he was just 10 years old. He said she was “sick” at the time of her passing, but didn’t say much else. Later, Eshleman found out that she had committed suicide.
Bug’s father told him that his son had never cried after her loss. Eshleman didn’t push Bug to talk about her. He knew the subject might be a difficult one, and he wanted to respect his space.
One morning, when the group of hikers were set to go their separate ways, Eshleman reached outside of his tent to get his boots. Tucked inside was a piece of paper with Bug’s mother’s name scrawled across it. He added it to the lists of names to carry without question.
“It just showed me what this could really mean for people. He never said she’d committed suicide and he never talked to me about that part of it, but he saw what I was doing as important,” Eshleman said. “He wanted her to be remembered. I knew I had to finish the hike.”
And so, he did. After months of grueling weather and literal wild encounters with bears, including an incident in which one trapped him inside a Porta Potty on the trail, he reached the finish line. It was a surreal moment for him.
“I came up over the hill and saw my wife waiting for me. I was holding the name tape of a dear friend of mine, one who had committed suicide, and she asked me if I was OK. I was, but I was saying goodbye,” Eshleman said. “It was closure for me.”
The experience inspired him to start the Unified Warrior Foundation. Getting to know Bug also inspired Eshleman to develop the Into the Wild Summit Project, a mentoring project for middle school youth throughout the country.
Through the program, veteran volunteers are partnered with students in public and private school districts to help fight bullying, encourage pro-social friendships, develop interpersonal skills, and reassert a sense of hope in the future.
“Imagine a kid who is bullied at school getting to have lunch with a veteran once a week. Imagine them getting to know other kids on the hikes we’ll do. They’ll make friends. They’ll feel less alone, and they’ll be empowered because we’ll be showing them all that they can do,” Eshleman said. “Our goal would be for them to learn to have belief in themselves.”
Band of brothers
Eshleman’s experience on the trail and the deep
sense of unity he felt with those whose names he carried with him will also be the subject of a feature film titled Follow Your Shadow.
Written by Eshleman and Todd Tavolazzi, the film is a retelling of his hike featuring the ghosts of eight fellow soldiers who lost their lives to suicide. Among them is late medic and Army Sgt. Sophie Champoux, who passed away in September 2011 from suicide.
According to reports, she had previously been raped multiple times while on duty in White Sands, New Mexico, in Sharan, Afghanistan, and at Georgia’s Fort Stewart. Her mother has said in interviews that Champoux told her she did not feel safe. She told her she felt there was “more to fear” from her fellow soldiers than American enemies.
Before her death, Champoux played softball, practiced Taekwondo, and played both
Late Army Sgt. Sophie Champoux served as a medic in Afghanistan. guitar and drums. She also had a sock monkey named Mr. Monkey, which she carried with her overseas during her military service.
In her honor, Eshleman has partnered with Fox River Mills, the makers of the original Sock Monkey, to develop a custom purple and teal sock monkey design. The custom sock monkeys will be available for purchase in the coming months for $36, with $8 out of every purchase donated directly to a military sexual trauma foundation in California. Another $9 from every purchase will go toward Unified Warrior Foundation projects.
“All of the money will go either to the foundation or directly toward the work we’re doing,” Eshleman said. “Money sitting in the bank isn’t helping veterans. Everyone who works with UWF works for free. No one gets paid and that allows us to partner with other organizations and help them out.”
To learn more about the memorial or the Unified Warrior Foundation, visit unifiedwarrior.org. To donate to the bike ride, click the donate button under the website’s ‘Events’ tab or visit any Bank of the Ozarks location.