Carlos Cruz, a UW freshman, peered over hundreds of heads as he watched his heroes parade down Memorial Way yesterday. Among them walked Bruce Crandall, one of the university’s eight Medal of Honor recipients whose legacy of service is now set in stone — literally.

Each of the eight stones featured in the university’s new Medal of Honor memorial symbolizes each of the eight UW medal recipients. For Veterans Day, the university administration dedicated the memorial during a formal ceremony as hundreds of veterans and their families looked on.

“I’ve never seen so many soldiers before,” Cruz said. “It was a really proud moment, a happy moment.”

With Cruz as an exception, few students attended the Wednesday-morning ceremony. Speakers, however, brought up students again and again in their speeches.

Crandall, whose Vietnam War helicopter heroics earned him the nation’s highest honor, said current students should also aspire to serve in some respect for their communities.

“I don’t care if it’s the military,” he said. “We’ve lost that sense of service and civility. There are things that are said today that my grandma would’ve washed my mouth out with soap for.”

Crandall joined less than 3,500 other medal recipients in 2007, but only after he made sure another pilot who flew alongside him was honored with the medal first. Crandall flew an unarmed helicopter into contested landing zones, ferrying in ammunition and supplies and withdrawing U.S. casualties multiple times during a Vietnam War battle in Ia Drang Valley. The same fight was fictionalized in the 2002 Mel Gibson film We Were Soliders.

At yesterday’s ceremony, Crandall joined hundreds of others as they explored the new memorial. In constructing the memorial, artist Michael Magrath placed the eight stones forming the centerpiece of the memorial within a five-pointed star, replacing the circular planter which had previously occupied the space.

The university’s monument arrived in its location after a nearly four-year effort led by former ASUW leaders. During 2006, Andrew Everett, ASUW senator introduced a resolution to memorialize Lt. Col. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, a UW alumnus and Medal of Honor recipient made famous in an NBC TV series dramatizing his World War II fighter-pilot heroics.

Other senators shot down that resolution.

In what turned into a national issue, comments from a senator who encouraged the university not to honor “another rich, white male” angered people from as far away as Illinois. ASUW president Lee Dunbar called for a new resolution, this time honoring all past Medal of Honor recipients. With Fox News cameras rolling, the senate debated and passed the resolution.

“We got a lot of outpouring of support afterwards,” Dunbar said.

He next turned to the UW’s fundraisers, who he hoped could mobilize the monetary support to move the monument from an idea on paper to action on the ground. Four years after Everett made his original proposal, Dunbar stood beside the monument shaking hands with UW President Mark Emmert and Medal of Honor recipients.

“It’s a rare occasion to get a student resolution and get it turned into something where people are walking around looking at it,” he said. “It’s been quite humbling to hear a thank you from them; they’re our greatest heroes.”

Reach reporter Andrew Doughman at news@dailyuw.com.