07/15/2016
The Western Nevada College (WNC) national traveling exhibition Always Lost: A Meditation on War closes on July 29th. The exhibit is currently on display at its final stop in the Main Gallery of WNC, where it all started seven years ago. As a way of saying thank you for supporting Always Lost, the WNC Veterans Resource Center will host a reception on Thursday, July 28th at 5:00 P.M. in the Art Gallery on the campus of WNC.
This classroom project that began at Western Nevada College evolved into a poignant memorial that brought home the costs of war to communities throughout the United States. When the original student exhibition opened at WNC in 2009, presumably for three weeks, no one imagined that it would capture the hearts and imaginations of thousands of people and travel the U.S. throughout the next seven years.
The Wall of the Dead became an important aspect of this effort and somewhere along the way, the project evolved into a memorial of the ongoing wars and a testament to all the wars that preceded them. When Always Lost was first displayed in 2009, there were nearly 4,000 fallen U.S. military service members from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars pictured on the Wall; today, that number is nearly 7,000 and includes fallen service members from Operations New Dawn, Inherent Resolve, and Freedom's Sentinel.
The student veterans of WNC want to invite everyone for a final get together to say a humble thank you to the creators for caring enough to put this powerful and moving exhibit together and stewarding it over the last seven years. It brought great credit upon WNC and the Northern Nevada area, but, more importantly, helped memorialize the sacrifices of the brave Americans who answered the call of duty.
Let us gather one more time to reflect on the cost of war and to say thank you to those indelible images on the Wall. Expect a few tears to be shed. We will provide the tissues. We will never forget their sacrifices, nor those of their families.
