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Sarasota News Leader THE 'TWO-FER' MEMORIAL A decade after troops came home to Saraso- ta from World War I in 1918, a local architect built a base around the flagpole at Five Points. The eight-sided structure provided room for bronze plaques commemorating the local war dead. Architect Clare Hosmer did not realize his monument would commemorate the dead from wars far in the future as well. The memorial was moved around a bit, from Five Points to the bayfront outside what was then City Hall in Hover Arcade. When the con- struction of U.S. 41 obliterated the old arcade and city dock, the monument was moved to its present location at Chaplain J.D. Hamel Park on Gulfstream Avenue. In 1998, local veterans found one of the pop- ular "American Doughboy" statues in Clear- water. After World War I, more than 150 cit- ies across the country had purchased these November 23, 2012 Page 32 pressed-copper versions of the statute created by E.M. Viquesney to honor the vets and vic- tims of that war. Sarasota vets paid to repair the Clearwater statue; then, local sculptor Frank Colson made a lost-wax mold to create an all-bronze version for Sarasota. In 1998 — 80 years after the guns fell silent along the Western Front — the bronze doughboy was hoisted atop Hos- mer's base. Today the memorial notes the sacrifice of Sarasotans from two world wars, plus a police action in Korea and a variety of undeclared conflicts in Vietnam, Panama, Iraq and Af- ghanistan. During and after each additional conflict, local veterans raised the money to add more names to the memorial — names of the Sailors and Kilties and Rams and Tor- nadoes and other Sarasotans who were not coming home. % The doughboy statue stands to the right of the tent for the ceremony in Hamel Park following the 2011 Veterans Day parade in downtown Sarasota. Photo by Norman Schimmel