(COLORADO SPRINGS) — A fundraiser is underway to permanently store an Honor Bell at the Pikes Peak National Cemetery.
On a chilly fall day, a small procession pulls around at the Pikes Peak National Cemetery. The cremated remains of Navy veteran James Fulffs are brought forward and placed on a riser with a mountainous view on the horizon.
Before James’s son, Bradley, and his wife, an American Flag is folded as Taps rings out. “My dad was a very honorable man,” Fulffs, a Marine veteran who served in the Iraq war, said. “He always loved to support veterans. In 2007, I was actually injured in Iraq from an IED blast. My father came and sat by my side the entire time I was in the hospital.”
Before his internment, the Honor bell tolls in the key of A.
“You ring a bell for joy, you toll a bell for mourning,” Larry Peterson, a board member with the Honor Bell Foundation said.
The bell weighs more than 1000 pounds and is cast in bronze. Cast into the bell are 12 medals from families of veterans who served in various wars. “If you look at the back of the bell, it says ‘forged from honor’, so they are part of this bell forever,” said Peterson.
The Honor Bell is only at the Pikes Peak National Cemetery a few times a month. Currently, the foundation is raising funds to create one that will be on-site full-time. “We’re looking at a goal of $400,000 for this Pikes Peak Honor Bell,” Peterson said.
Peterson is not only a board member and volunteer for the Honor Bell Foundation but is an Air Force Veteran. “We all have reasons for doing this,” Peterson said. “I lost 40 crew members and four aircraft when I was in Southeast Asia in 1972. The VA gave me some counseling and some drugs, but this bell gives me every day the opportunity to remember them and to honor those veterans we have lost along the way.”
The bell is one final honor for the veterans who have found their final rest, the bell is located in the Denver area most of the time and is in Colorado Springs a few times a month. The donation would make it possible to station a second bell that can serve the Pikes Peak Region full-time.
“It’s such an honor to have this here,” Fulffs says after the bell was tolled in honor of his father. “I think if my dad was still here with us… I think he would have loved it. I think it’s a great way to honor his memory.”
Donations can be made through the website linked above, in the Donate Pikes Peak tab.
“My father would want to be remembered for what he did in his life. My dad was definitely a man who loved people and giving back. That’s the type of man he was.”
