This morning at Bledsoe Miller Park, community members gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony at what will eventually become the Doris Miller memorial. The event, which took place on what would've been Miller's 96th birthday, is an event that’s been nearly 8 years and 1.35 million dollars in the making.
On the east bank of the Brazos this morning…the air filled with the sounds of the Star-Spangled Banner, as community members gathered at the 2-acre site that will become home to the Doris Miller Memorial.
Miller, a native of Waco, served in the United States Navy as a cook. He became the first African-American to be warded the Navy Cross for his bravery during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The initial idea for the memorial came about 7-and-a-half years ago when Baylor Law Professor Gerry Powell and others, inspired by the sculptures along the Brazos, thought something was missing.
“There was a Texas ranger, a hero," Powell said at the event that also marked what would've been Miller's 96th birthday. "There were Chisholm Trail drovers, who were heroes in this state. And we said ‘You know what a great thing, the Waco Cultural Arts group is doing a great thing for this community, if there will be statues of heroes on the banks of the Brazos, there must be, we said, a statute of Doris Miller.”
In the following years, the project began to take shape when the City of Waco allocated land for the site. By 2011, a design for the memorial was selected and the next phase for the project set: raising the $1.35 million needed to build the memorial. Of that total amount, project organizers say roughly $70,000 is still needed. Doreen Ravenscroft - who's been instrumental in seeing the memorial built - says it took nearly 5 years of funding to get to this point. Ravenscroft is also president of the nonprofit group Cultural Arts of Waco.
“We’re very proud of the people that supported us," Ravenscroft said. " It doesn’t matter how large or small the donation, I just got one today that just gave me a dollar out of his own pocket money. You know, that is just as special as the big donations because it came because he wanted to.”
That support – ranging from several large-sum donations over the years to small boxes of change that children have saved up – has helped bring the community together, says Doris Miller’s niece, Florietta Miller.
“It’s like…what Martin Luther King kind of said, ‘we overcome.’ You know what I’m saying? By everybody sticking in, it’s showing that we’re growing as a family, instead of apart, we all belong here, we all family.”