Remembering the Fallen

Veteran U.S. Marine Maj. Jim Geiser is trying to raise funds for a Scottsdale Memorial for

the Fallen. (Dennis Murphy/ Contributing Photographer)

Veteran Maj. Jim Geiser wants to make a statement

By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski

U.S. Marine Maj. Jim Geiser calls the Scottsdale Memorial for the Fallen a labor of love.

He is taking the steps toward creating the memorial by combining his love of genealogy, his respect for his former occupation, and the honor of fallen military members. Once $310,000 is raised, a seven-sided granite stone will list 66 Scottsdale residents who died while on active duty. The emblems of the fi ve branches of service and the city of Scottsdale logo will adorn it.

“We try to set something as an example for moms and dads and aunts and uncles to take their kids and show them these are the individuals who gave their lives so we could have the freedoms we have today. We don’t want that to get lost,” Geiser says.

“It’s just something we think needs to be done. It would be my hope that every other city in the state of Arizona would have a monument like this for their fallen, a by-name monument.”

Set to be placed on the northeast side of Scottsdale City Hall, the memorial is nearly a decade in the making.

In 2014, a group of Scottsdale citizens led by Geiser formed the City of Scottsdale Memorial Action Committee with the hopes of establishing the memorial, but the fundraising process took longer than the committee expected.

“We started this process … it’ll be eight years coming up now, I think, in April or May, and all along we started trying to raise funds,” Geiser says.

“We thought when raising funds that the city of Scottsdale residents would run forward with handfuls of money to help us. We missed that by about 100%, and we started pursuing other avenues of fundraising.”

While total costs are hard to predict, Geiser says the group has already raised about $231,000 toward its $310,000 goal.

Geiser says many, including the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, have come forward with donations.

The research behind the memorial took some time. Geiser painstakingly identifi ed the fallen military with ties to Scottsdale.

“We want it to be accurate,” he says. “I don’t want to miss anybody. For example, we went through two world wars before Scottsdale had any boundaries. We had

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three individuals who died during World War I — two from the Pima community and one from the community here.

“I eventually came up with 66 names, three of whom I knew personally, 17 are from the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community lands and three from the Yavapai Nation, and the rest were residents of Scottsdale,” Geiser says.

The honored have received a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, 11 Bronze Stars, fi ve Air Medals and two POW Medals.

Arizona’s Offi cial State Historian Marshall Trimble, a committee board member, says the research project relied heavily on family members of those who served.

Trimble came on board after Geiser contacted him about his uncle Jack, an Army sergeant who served in New Guinea.

He said most helpful were “the ones who had sons or daughter in the military, and if they knew anything, we really had to rely on the public to help us out on this.”

“The place is so large now, people don’t know everybody around in town like they used to, and so I have to say we have to credit a lot of the people that knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody and so forth,” Trimble tells the Scottsdale Progress, the sister publication to Airpark News.

One of the most helpful resources were old high school yearbooks and the FindaGrave website.

“Back in the early days when my uncle went to school at Scottsdale High, there was only one high school, so it was pretty easy to track that,” Trimble says. “Now we’ve got fi ve or six or seven high schools here in Scottsdale, and that’s a lot of names and we don’t know everybody like we used to, and so we had to do a lot of searching and just get help from the community with what we were trying to do.”

Longtime advocate

Geiser could be called an advocate for the fallen. After he was asked to be a part of the ASU veterans’ chapter of the alumni association, Geiser decided to create a memorial for the school.

“They told me at ASU they read the names of all the veterans on Veterans Day,” he says. “I do genealogic research as a hobby, and I wanted to see their list. Nobody knew who had the list. It took me almost a year to fi nd it.”

After extensive research, Geiser worked with consultants to create a wall-mounted memorial next to the Pat Tillman Center. Again, fi rst, he needed to raise money.

“I wrote a letter to Dr. Crow asking for help,” Geiser says. “Then $30,000 appeared and we built the memorial. It was dedicated. We’ve added three names now since we dedicated it.”

He’s disappointed that most students just pass by it and “don’t appreciate it.”

“It’s there for them to pause and refl ect,” he says. “There’s a bench there. Pat Tillman’s name is on there. Two of my friends’ names are on there. Through an organization called FindaGrave, I did the best I could to document those individuals’ stories. Some are pretty sad. One of them crashed his airplane on McDowell Road and 53rd Street during a training exercise.”

Geiser hopes the memorial becomes as important to the Scottsdale community as to relatives of those it honors.

Scottsdale Memorial for the Fallen

Donations can be made by mail to Arizona Community Foundation, 2201 E. Camelback Road, Suite 405B, Phoenix, AZ, 85016, with checks made out to Arizona Community Foundation and designated for “SMFTF.” 