The Santa Clarita City Council has approved a recognition for the War on Terror at Veterans Historical Plaza, more than five years after U.S. troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan marked the end of the conflict.
Many consider the highly publicized U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan as the end of the war, but the two decades of conflict left a toll that will be felt by many for a long time to come.
Mayor Laurene Weste thanked the Slocum family, which donated to create the War on Terror plaque around the time Veterans Historical Plaza was first formed in 2005.
“I think the plaque done for Veterans Historical Plaza — it’s the last historical plaque — is beautiful, and I want to thank the Slocum family with deepest appreciation and big heart for them helping to finish that up and tribute to their son they lost, and he was a wonderful young man, and we are proud and honored to have that plaque in place in his honor,” she said.
Kay Slocum said the donation for the plaque was made in honor of her son, Ricky Slocum, a Marine who died on Oct. 24, 2004, in a vehicle accident while he was serving in Iraq.
Lance Cpl. Richard P. “Ricky” Slocum, a 19-year-old Saugus High graduate, was thrown from a Humvee in Abu Ghraib, after the vehicle he was in swerved to avoid a barricade in the road, according to news reports in The Signal from the time.
Hundreds came out to honor his life during a service at Grace Baptist Church.
Kay Slocum was glad to see the memorial was moving along, hopeful it might be completed in time for Memorial Day and sad that her husband, Bob, would not be there to see it. He died in 2024.
The city has said the plaque has been ordered, but there’s been no date given yet for delivery, according to officials.
“It’s super meaningful. I wish my husband were still alive because it would have meant a tremendous amount to him,” Kay Slocum said in a phone interview Friday. “He was extremely active with the memorial committee at the Eternal Valley, and he was invested in things like the Veterans (Historical) Plaza, just to make sure all of our veterans were honored, and especially the fallen.”
City Communications Manager Carrie Lujan said the reason behind the timing is that city officials were waiting on the final information from the federal government regarding statistics and data from the War on Terror.
The plaque explains how the terrorist attacks on 9/11 that claimed nearly 3,000 lives, and also the toll that it took on U.S. service members.
“Over the next two decades, millions of Americans served in support of the GWOT. In 2011, U.S. forces located and killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden,” the plaque reads. “In 2021, following the withdrawal of U.S: and coalition forces from Afghanistan, the GWOT came to an end. More than 7,000 American service members gave their lives, and more than 53,000 were wounded in action.”
