(The following article is written by John C. Lauridson, a member of the family who owned the land for 90 years where the Veterans Memorial will be built at 139th and Colorado Blvd.  Our family owned and operated a dairy farm at 128th and Colorado Blvd. in addition to this land.)

Our family is very pleased that a Veterans Memorial is being planned on the land that our family (Lauridson) had owned and farmed from the early 1900's to the 1990's.

My father, John Lauridson, emigrated from Denmark in 1904.  A few years later he purchased the 160 acres where this 18 acre park will be located with the Veterans Memorial, in addition to 80 acres at 128th and Colorado Blvd., where the family resided and farmed.

We believe this will be an extremely fitting memorial as my brother, Staff Sergeant Thomas J. Lauridson, was killed in France near Paris on Oct. 3, 1944, while serving in the 90th Division of the 315th Combat Engineers of the 3rd Army under General Patton. 

Another brother, Donald G., served in the South Pacific from 1942-1945.  After returning to civilian life, he was employed by the State of Colorado Game and Fish Dept.  He was killed March 17,1950 in a plane crash while on duty counting elk west of Trapper's Lake.  The two large blue spruce trees were retrieved from the plane crash site as seedlings and were planted that year. 

In 1987 the City of Thornton bagged and moved the trees to the present location to save them when Colorado Boulevard was widened, which miraculously fit in with the current landscaping.

John C. Lauridson
Brighton, CO