Letters of Appreciation for the Highground  

 

Clark County Press (Neillsville, WI.)

June 6, 2007, Page 3

Transcribed by: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon

Highground and Neillsville have become a special place for family reunions

 

To the editor:

My mother and father spent the majority of their lives in Neillsville.  My family and I have been coming to Neillsville at least once a year since 1967, shortly after I got out of the service (’63 – ’65).  My brother, also a Veteran, and my family and I, used to go to, what is now called The Highground, every since that time, simply because of its’ amazing view and abundance of nature for us all to enjoy.

It was a pleasant surprise to find our sanctuary; become a place of quiet contemplation, memorializing our war veterans.  It seemed for quite some time progress was rather slow, but over the last year or two it has been spectacular.  Not only the quantity of the monuments commemorating our veterans, but the quality of the work itself.  Though my parents have since passed many years ago, my family and I still try to come to Neillsville every year.

It started as an attempt to stay in touch with my parents’ incredibly considerate and kind neighbors, Tim and Nancy Kopp.  It also became a reason to see our old family friend, Mick Kuzjak, who was always kind enough to let us fish in the river behind his farm.  Now it’s become a sort of mini family reunion, with relatives meeting us from other parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota.  My daughter and her husband even flew in from Virginia…to drive from Chicago to Neillsville with us.

Every year, we visit my parents’ graves and stop by Herb Smith’s grave, my parents’ other neighbor, good friend, and decorated war veteran.  After the visit, we go to The Highground.  It’s breath-taking every time.  The constant improvements, not to mention the long standing view, now accompanied by an assortment of veterans and families meeting in this quiet sanctuary to ponder those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedom.  The statues tell the stories of these heroic men and women.  They seem frozen in time, plucked from the very moment where they suffered the horrors of war and fought for the glory which is freedom.

I write this to say “thank you” to the wonderful people of Neillsville and to those responsible for making The High-ground a place of peace, beauty, and appreciation.  It’s difficult to imagine anyone who takes the time to walk the area would not feel another presence there, not of a person, but of an ideal, an ideal worth sacrificing our loved ones for, an ideal which sets all of us in the United States of America apart from the world around us.  Thank you!

Kindest regards,

Nick Panczyk and family

Schaumburg, IL

..............

 

Clark County Press (Neillsville, WI.)

June 6, 2007, Page 3

Transcribed by: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon

Highground should be source of pride

 To the editor,

Residents of Clark County, and especially Neillsville, should be proud.  The Highground was given special recognition on Memorial Day in both the WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL and the CAPITAL TIMES (Madison, WI daily news-papers).  Sectional front page color photos and lengthy articles were published, “Bells for state’s fallen troops” and “States war dead not forgotten at Highground.”  Of the number of quotes printed from those visiting and working at The Highground the day the reporters were there, the one most moving to me was that of National Guard Staff Sgt. David Barth.  He commented on his tour of duty in Iraq.  “My simple acts of kindness, someday may be remembered of what we have done for them.  And it they (children) are faced with a choice of doing something right or wrong or bad or good, hopefully they will think back and remember we weren’t so bad.”

Congratulations to all those that have done, and do, so much to make The Highground one of the Wisconsin’s , and even the Midwest’s, premier attractions for one to reflect, to forget, to remember, and to come home to.

Rod McLean

Madison, WI

 

 

 

 


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