Cascade Memorial Blog

[From the article in the Bellevue Reporter by Nat Levy | January 21 2011]

A small memorial rests in the center of Bellevue’s Downtown Park, flanked by trees. Thousands of walkers and joggers navigate the paths to the outside of the park every day without venturing inward through the often soggy grass to see what lies in the center.

The more than 80-year-old memorial immortalizes the contributions of three Bellevue men who died in World War I with elm trees planted soon after their deaths.

The three trees and the small concrete memorial bear witness to Bellevue’s metamorphosis as new skyscrapers turned the downtown into an exponentially rising concrete forest. The park went from a school yard to a popular downtown getaway spot. All that time, there was one constant, the small memorial titled “Lest we forget.”

But we did. The flagpole that originally jutted skyward from the memorial is gone. The monument decayed, and the concrete punctured down the center, leaving a noticeable chasm.

But one man is attempting to revive and restore the memories often ignored, but never forgotten with a revitalized memorial that will serve as a renovated centerpiece of Bellevue’s beloved 20-acre green oasis.

Bob Shay, a former Navy photographer, has made it his personal mission to restore the memorial to its former glory.

“I get a little choked up when I see a monument like this one,” said Shay, who first came to Bellevue in 1977. “I get a little more choked up when you find it’s just been ignored for so long.”

Shay wants to keep the monument as it is, a small slab, surrounded by trees to honor the three men killed in the war. He’s still trying to determine exactly what he wants, but he knows he wants to add a flag, like what was originally there. He wants to potentially add lights so the flag can fly all the time. Most of all, he wants to make sure he doesn’t lose the character of the classic monument in an upgrade.

“I don’t want it to be this huge monument because it wasn’t,” he said. “When it was first done it wasn’t that; it was a simple monument to three guys, and I’d like to keep it a simple monument to three guys.”