A Marine veteran remembers America’s fallen heroes in a roadside tribute

Claire Swatosh came home. Others did not.That is the simplest way to understand the Heroes Museum, a memorial garden and artifact exhibit this Marine veteran has spent much of the past 30 years building beside Old Route 66. It is not a roadside attraction, exactly, though travelers from around the world do stop. It is not a private collection, exactly – though the museum is crowded with artifacts he has brought in over the decades: flags, uniforms, firefighting gear, as well as photographs and other keepsakes, which he carefully arranges and displays. Why We Wrote This The Heroes Museum is one man’s ongoing answer to an obligation he never quite stopped feeling: “I had a lot of friends that didn’t come home. This is my way of giving back.” It is, rather, one man’s ongoing answer to an obligation he never quite stopped feeling.“I spent 21 1/2 years in the Marine Corps,” says Mr. Swatosh, who, well into his eighth decade, is still running a landscaping business. “I had a lot of friends that didn’t come home. This is my way of giving back.” Along Route 66, America has built thousands of shrines to motion: neon signs and motor courts, old diners and filling stations – places that remember the road as escape. Mr. Swatosh built something slower beside it.He started the project three decades ago with the idea for a simple memorial pond with a flag. But he kept adding to it. Pathways. Native plants and grasses. A waterfall and gazebo. “All this rock I’ve hauled in from Arkansas, or eastern Missouri – the glitter rock actually come out of Canada,” Mr. Swatosh says. He grew up in Iowa and joined the Marine Corps at 17, a young man living on his own and needing something to turn his life around, he says. He had never been far from home until he boarded a plane for San Diego. He stayed almost 22 years, working on the decks of aircraft carriers and then retiring as a gunnery sergeant in 1991. His service took him through the last years of the Vietnam War and later through the conflict in Lebanon in the 1980s. Along the way, losses accumulated. One still stands out: “a young officer, very, very intelligent.” He pauses, breathes deeply. “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”He moved to southwest Missouri in 1993, working for a local explosives factory. After being laid off, he started his landscaping business.From the start, he wanted to make his property on Route 66 a memorial for veterans. There have been three different versions over the years, and in some ways it’s still not finished. His memorial dune buggy – which he has slowly built over the past 13 years, using his monthly retirement check to fund the project – is supposed to make people stop, look, and think. Harry Bruinius/The Christian Science Monitor The museum, beside Old Route 66, attracts visitors from around the world. “That’s nothing about me,” he says of the museum and its centerpiece. “It’s about all the people that served, come home; served, didn’t come home.”The stones in the walkway can be removed and inscribed with the names of those lost. People who stop sometimes buy one to honor someone they knew. The garden and museum honor military veterans, firefighters, law enforcement officers, medics, and service animals. “The military’s not the only heroes,” Mr. Swatosh says. “We’ve got homefront heroes, too.” He does not charge admission. Visitors leave donations if they want. Each year, he sets a goal for Toys for Tots and matches what the museum brings in with money from his business. Last year, he says, he helped provide 104 bicycles and hundreds of dollars in toys for local families.Visitors find him from everywhere: Norway, Germany, Russia, France, Switzerland, Hungary, Spain, Italy. Motorcyclists come in groups. Families wander in from the old road. Some arrive curious about Route 66 nostalgia and find, instead, a working man’s theology of remembrance.“I don’t preach my faith, but if I wake up in the morning, then the Lord’s blessed me with another day,” Mr. Swatosh says. “If it had been up to me, I’d have been gone a long time ago. Lord’s got other plans. So I’m a firm believer that he looks over me and takes care of me.“And, you know, the things I’ve seen, some of the things that I’ve done, pushes me to keep going, keep adding on, keep giving back.”