GRAFTON – According to Mayor Mike Morrow, Grafton’s soldiers have arrived home.
On Monday, May 11, 2026, a small crowd gathered at the site of the National Memorial of Military Ascent (NMMA) in Grafton to welcome a truck carrying several life-sized statues. These 500-pound statues will be installed on the face of the bluff over the next few days.
“Today, the National Memorial of Military Ascent soldiers are deploying to Grafton, Illinois, for duty,” Morrow said. “What that means to us is the completion of all of the last couple of years of work — the scanning, the live models, the working on the drawings, working on all of the plans, as we see out here, finishing up the area for the installation of the soldiers.”
Morrow has led the charge to create the NMMA. For the past few years, he and several other Grafton residents have worked hard to plan and fund the memorial site.
The final memorial will feature 12 statues posed to look as if they are climbing the bluff. This is a reference to the Point du Hoc landing in Normandy, France, on D-Day.
To create the statues, members of the reenactor group the Second Ranger Battalion — and a few lucky Grafton residents — were scanned. The statues are modeled after them.
On May 11, the statues were transported from North Carolina, where they were made by Carolina Bronze Sculpture, Inc., to Grafton, with a police escort for the final stretch of the drive between Alton and Grafton on the River Road.
Morrow said there would be security guarding the truck overnight on May 11, with plans to unload the statues starting on the morning of May 12.
“Within the next two days, we’ll start installing them on the wall itself,” he said. “So by the end of the week or the end of the weekend, we should have everything installed or pretty close to it.”
The entire Riverbend community is encouraged to celebrate the completion of this first phase of the project. On June 6, 2026, there will be a dedication ceremony at 9:30 a.m. Morrow noted that there will be several military officials there, and President Donald Trump and Governor J.B. Pritzker have both been invited.
That evening, there will be a 1940s-themed gala at The Loading Dock in Grafton. Morrow plans to wear his Dress Blues.
He expressed his excitement to complete this phase of the project but shared there are still big plans for the memorial to honor veterans.
“This is going to be the dedication of phase one,” he explained. “We’re going to be fundraising for phase two. We’ll be talking about our transformational gift that we received from a donor for phase one, and we’ll be looking for that transformational gift from someone for phase two to get us off and running, so we will be actively fundraising. The second one is going to be themed on the STAB boat that we have from Vietnam that was built here in Grafton that you see sitting out at our visitor center.”
More information will be available soon. In the meantime, Morrow encourages people to visit the official National Memorial of Military Ascent website for more information, including how to donate and updates about the dedication ceremony and gala. He emphasized the importance of the memorial for people in Grafton and beyond.
“This is a monument and a memorial for all veterans, all civilians,” he added.
