Marion “Mick” Hersey is a man with a mission.
That mission is to see that every veteran memorial in Kitsap County is well taken care of and maintained to preserve the respect that the memorial was intended to hold.
The retired Navy cook’s inspiration and frustration started with a simple walk down the Bremerton boardwalk near the ferry terminal in 2010. The boardwalk’s 350-plus plaques for those who served had been obviously ignored for some time.
Saltwater and wind had weathered the memorials down. The plaques looked rugged, and, even more upsetting, forgotten by the ones who had put them there in the first place, Hersey said.
“I saw the plaques and wondered why nobody was taking care of them,” Hersey said.
He went to the city and started asking questions. At first, no one had answers for him. He said he got the runaround, and recalled speaking to several department heads — none of which wanted to take on the responsibility.
Then he found out that each plaque had been individually purchased. Each one was to be maintained by the purchaser, he was told.
“The excuse was, well, whoever bought the plaque was supposed to maintain it,” said Hersey.
That didn’t set well with Hersey. He wanted to know how much it would cost to re-paint and refurbish the memorials. The city contacted the business that had put the plaques in, and received a quote for upkeep.
The grand total would be $7,000, the city officials told him — money the city did not have a budget for at the time. Hersey quickly discovered that most of the businesses that had individually sponsored a plaque had since shut down. Some were even old Navy ships that had been decommissioned.
That left it in his hands as far as he was concerned. After speaking briefly with Mayor Patty Lent, the two agreed that one plaque would be refurbished for the mayor’s inspection. He had shown up in her office in his grubby paint clothes, wanting to know if he would be allowed to officially fix up the forgotten plaques.
“She liked it so much I got started on them,” he said. “Next thing I knew, I was working on veteran memorials.”
The rest, as they say, is history — history to be taken care of by Mick Hersey himself.
That spring, he and his niece, Tameka Hulen, sat on the boardwalk from March through May and painted the plaques with a tip jar sitting right beside them.
After that, he couldn’t stop.
“I’ve always been interested in history,” he said. If the plaques had piqued his interest; the other memorials he discovered pushed him into an obsession of finding the treasure trove of memorials that others had left alone.
Now, 76 memorials later, he has refurbishing down to a science. He also has the local Navy commands on speed dial, as well as other locals he knows who will happily volunteer their time to restoring the memorials.
He also has managed to solicit the help of Lowe’s to cover the financial aspect of the refurbishments. To date, Lowe’s has provided between $4,000-$6,000 in materials for painting and upgrades to the memorials, Hersey said. Others, such as his current employer QED, have also donated toward the project.
This Memorial Day, 31 of the memorial sites with American flags will be given new flags to fly, another donation from Lowe’s. The cheapest flag is around $30, and the most expensive flag is $300.
“I think it’s fabulous. I think it’s great the community’s gotten behind him on this,” said John Benitez, Lowe’s merchandising department manager. “We’re excited to be a partner on a lot of the projects with him.”
For Benitez, the projects are also personal. His wife, Cindy Benitez spent 20 years in the Navy as a boatswain’s mate.
“I think it’s a good way for us to preserve our way of life. We’re a family that takes care of its own. It’s a good thing we give back to those in our community. We come back here and establish the things they’ve put here for future generations to appreciate.”
When it comes to proper preservation, Hersey doesn’t just use any type of tools or chemicals to refresh the work of what’s already been done. He has borrowed tools from the Navy, and his work has offered some as well for him to work on the sites. As former Navy, Hersey learned how to take care of brass. Over the years, while doing genealogical research and visiting family graves, he also discovered how to treat the grave sites with the proper chemicals and paint.
“Personally, I’ve celebrated Memorial Day as a little kid in South Dakota,” said Hersey. “We’d put flowers on the graves (of those who served).”
For every memorial he and others retouch, he learns as much as he can about it for listing on the Visit Kitsap Peninsula website. That way, visitors coming to the county can visit every known memorial.
“He provided us with a lot of great information. We’ve used his work for the basis for some handouts for veterans memorials,” said Patty Graf-Hoke, executive director of Visit Kitsap Peninsula. “It’s nice that he’s taken a leadership to help commemorate them and make sure they don’t get lost.”
With the help of fellow veteran Leif Bentsen, Hersey created a comprehensive listing of all Kitsap County memorials in the area. For those who visit the official tourism website of Kitsap County, there’s a listing with brief history notes and photos to accompany each memorial. Tourists — and locals — can print out the listing to track through the county on their hunt for veteran memorials.
“I think what he’s done is absolutely wonderful because many of them had been neglected for so many years. He brought a skillset of how to restore them correctly,” said Bentsen. “People need to understand how horrible war is; this helps them remember it and the sacrifices people have made.”
When Hersey started his memorial preservation project, he was told there were only 26 total memorials in the whole county.
Once he got going, and word got out about his project, he found more. Some are on public property; others are on private property. The memorials are in obvious places — like cemeteries — and off-the-beaten path, like at local churches or businesses.
One of the projects that took the longest to work on was Naval Ammunition Depot (NAD) Park in Bremerton. For six months, Hersey worked with Navy volunteers and others to repaint a Navy jet to match its paint job it had on the very last flight it ever took. According to Hersey, the plane actually belongs to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla. The jet was deeded to the city years ago, but permission is still required for any updates or paint jobs it might receive.
“They actually own any Navy jet that’s in any park in the United States,” Hersey added.
Upon starting the project, he only wanted to focus on Bremerton. But by then locals started sharing with him their knowledge of other memorials — from Hansville all the way down to Port Orchard.
“It’s something that I don’t think should ever be let die. People have money for parks, roads; they have money to put in the memorial, but not to keep it up,” he said. “With the weather up here, things get covered up with mold and mildew real quick.”
And while respect is the driving factor for keeping up the memorials that no one else wants to take on, his love of the area and history are also what keep Hersey organizing volunteer crews and spending his own time on restoration.
“It’s a passion that I have,” he said. “When people ask why I do memorials, it’s to make sure the younger generation carries on the trend.”
Since his first refurbishment in 2010, Hersey is always on the lookout for new memorials that may need his touch. He also takes every weekend and drives to prior project sites to ensure that mold hasn’t taken hold in the rainy months.
As the weather warms up and the sun pushes away the rain, Hersey will once again get busy in his fourth year of restorations. He already has a list of four new memorials he wants to tend to as soon as possible.
His next project will be at the Miller-Woodlawn Funeral Home and Memorial Park. Just in front of the memorial park is where a First Responders memorial and a mast from the USS Bremerton sits overlooking the Puget Sound. During the first week of May, Hersey and his volunteers will tackle painting and cleaning the memorials.
The park is also the burial site of Medal of Honor recipient John D. “Bud” Hawk, a fellow veteran he became close to in his last six months of life. Hersey said his family knew how much Hawk enjoyed Hersey’s company that he was bestowed with the honor of planning Hawk’s memorial service.
When around the area, he’ll visit Hawk’s grave, and he plans to soon add another memorial honoring the beloved deceased Kitsap veteran.
And when it comes to important memories, Hersey hopes that locals will keep his project alive once he can no longer take care of it himself. It is his hope that his passion is instilled deep enough into his volunteers and locals after they’ve been to one of the memorials he’s fixed up.
When looking at the guide to “Kitsap County Veterans Memorials and Museums” from the Visit Kitsap Peninsula website, it is easy for one to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of areas dedicated to wars as old as the War of 1812.
Even if a visitor doesn’t have time to visit them all, just one may touch them like they’ve touched Hersey and others who have seen his dedication to the work he does, all for free.
“I think it’s really special that he’s cataloged all that. We have a lot of veterans, even regardless of their affiliation, veterans are always interested in honoring other veterans over the years,” said Graf-Hoke. “I think he’s provided a tremendous service to the veterans that have served our country, and we added his list to the Visit Kitsap Peninsula website. We couldn’t of done that without the work he did.”