It is with great honor that I write this piece about the USS Liberty. In November 2022 Phil Tourney asked me if I would consider making the USS Liberty Monument. I said to him let me think about it. Well after 2 days I said yes. He stated to me that I could get in trouble and we all know what that could mean. I told him yes, and that I didn’t give a shit. We started the Liberty on January 9, 2022. From the first time I sat at my computer, until we started the drawings 3 ½ months later I lived and breathed the Liberty from the time I got up until I went to bed, and I read and studied everything I could get my hands on. I would wake up in the middle of the night and go to my computer to find more information. It’s all I thought about. In April we were give a 7 ton piece of marble that was donated by the Colorado Stone Quarry, out of Delta, Co. You monument is made with the same marble that all of the monuments in Washington D.C. We can be really proud of that. The cost was about $20,000.00.

As I was studying everything I watched tons of video’s clicked hundreds and hundreds of pictures and printed them all. In late March last year my computer wouldn’t let me capture the images that I had been collecting for over a month, it said flagged image, or inapporiate image. Then my computer froze. Hmm wonder what happened. I fixed it and kept moving forward. Robert at Robert Stone Inc. in Grand Junction received the marble around the first of April, he cut it and finished it to perfection. It was delivered to Lark Abel’s studio by truck and the work began. We studied the design for about 2 months, redrawing, redoing, adding more, embellishing the images, and moving the pictures so it told your story. We did not have enough room on the front so we decided to do the back as well. The front we described everything that happened during the attack. We then focused on the after-math. Let me tell you there was hundreds of hours and alot of tears cried while making this monument. We had to make sure we got everything historically correct without being political. Lark and I took a full size mock up of the monument to the last reunion and was one of my life’s most touching moments. My team Lark Abel and our silent artist worked so hard and kept making your monument better and better. We were not pleased when we thought it was done, and then decided to add the buttress’s to it. It made it monumental!!! I told Phil from the beginning that we cannot re write history, the USS Liberty has had no respect or honor for now 57 years. My part of doing this is once again to honor and literlly write your story in stone!!! It will stand as a testimony to all of your shipmates that died and were injured, and had to live for 57 years with nothing. Not anymore!!! It is my greatest honor to have made this monument and having it placed at VFW Post 4809 is beyond my belief. I have no words to express to thank them for giving your monument a home and final resting place. If having this monument has given just one of your shipmates some peace then I have done what I set out to do.

Respectfully,
Cathy Meskel
Support Our Soldiers Foundation Founder
970-379-3324
www.supportoursoldiersfoundation.org