WA teen’s moving tribute to fallen hero families. ‘Deserve to be honored’
Shirley Schmunk nearly cried when she saw the bronze statue in the back of Sutton Betti’s pickup truck.
The Loveland, Colo., artist had just journeyed 1,100 miles to deliver it Friday to Sunset Gardens cemetery in Richland.
The 3-foot, 200-pound statue was of a mourning Gold Star mother clutching an American burial flag. It hadn’t been installed yet, and already was moving families of service members who died in the line of duty.
“It’s beautiful,” said Schmunk, mother to the late Army Spc. Jeremiah Schmunk. He died in 2004 at the age of 20 while deployed in Iraq.
“You can feel everything. As a Gold Star mom, I can feel it. I know what it’s saying,” said Schmunk, 77.
It was saying I’m hurt and I don’t want to be in this situation, she said.
There are hundreds of thousands of Gold Star family members across the U.S., individuals who have lost a direct family member during active-duty military services. It acknowledges the family’s grief and continued healing.
More than 7,000 troops died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and more than 16,000 have perished since the start of the War on Terror.
Alexandra McColley, 17, of Pasco, wanted to find some way to honor the sacrifices those families made, and to raise awareness of the Gold Star struggle.
As part of her capstone project with the American Heritage Girls Christian scouting organization, McColley planned, commissioned, landscaped and led the installation of the statue this week.
A dedication ceremony was held Saturday. The statue faces Einan’s Fallen Heroes memorial.
McColley says her passion for the families has pushed the project beyond the goal of earning her Stars and Stripes award.
“One of the biggest goals behind this project was for (families) to know they are honored, loved and valued, and that they’re cared about,” she said. “Another one of our goals was for the community to know about the sacrifices of Gold Star families, and to know that these families do deserve to be honored and remembered, and not just be pushed aside.”
‘They deserve to be honored’
McColley, who is homeschooled and takes colleges classes through the Running Start program, spent nine months planning the installation.
It was originally supposed to be a 100-hour project. She spent twice that amount of time sending emails, lobbying donors, doing research and landscaping the 640-square-foot site.
McColley’s passion was lit by an encounter with Schmunk at a 2022 Time of Remembrance event, where she learned about Jeremiah and the family’s loss.
“Prior to volunteering at that event, I didn’t really know what a Gold Star family was. I hadn’t heard the term before. But once I was able to attend and meet the families, and hear the stories of their fallen heroes, that’s when I realized these are important people, and they deserve to be honored,” she said.
When it came time to do her project, she knew she wanted to do some sort of monument. While browsing pictures of statues online, McColley came upon a statue at a cemetery in Oklahoma.
The piece, made by Betti, brought the scout to tears.
“I continued to look for ideas, but I kept coming back to that statue,” she said.
Betti said yes to her commission, noting that it would be one of the last statues of its kind in this series.
The whole project cost around $50,000, with the lifesize bronze bust costing about $35,000. HiLine Engineering and Fabrication’s name is engraved on the statue’s base for their $15,000 donation, a bible quote is engraved on the other side.
McColley said it was a “shocking” amount to donate. It came at a fortunate time, too: They were just days away — and thousands of dollars short — from needing to pay the deposit to Betti.
She’s since raised $40,000 for the project. Donations can be made out to “Richland Cemetery Association,” and mailed to 915 Bypass Highway, Richland, WA.
“It was crazy to think that this picture we had seen nine months ago, we now had our own statue. I believe that it is so much more beautiful than the one in Oklahoma, that we originally saw. The colors are so vibrant,” McColley said.
‘The right girl’
Betti, 52, has installed similar Gold Star mother statues around the country. He told the Tri-City Herald that the figure was inspired by when his sister was handed a burial flag during his father’s funeral service.
His father, who died in 2015, was a Marine Corps veteran who served during the Vietnam War.
“I’ve kept that with me for 10 years,” he said. “I sculpted this piece in 2017, and I used that photo that I found of that moment to not necessarily design it, but to capture the emotion and the feelings in the sculpture.”
It’s his first piece in Washington state. The work helps to keep his father close to him.
“It’s been a labor of love to keep his memory going,” he said. “My dad did a lot for vets in Southern California. The service that they had for him, every vet in the county showed up. They did the flyover — I didn’t know any of this stuff when he was alive. He never told me about it.”
Megan Pope, Schmunk’s niece, and an American Heritage Girls leader, said she was blown away by McColley’s idea and how she brought it to life.
Their scouts organization had never seen a project this big before, she said. She advocated on McColley’s behalf to organization leaders.
“This is the right girl, the right community and the right purpose,” Pope recalls telling an American Heritage Girls executive.
“I watched her grow in her communication skills, I watched her write speeches for the public... I knew she wanted to get it done, and how she was willing to step out of her comfort zone to do the things that weren’t easy to get it done,” she continued.
The holidays can be especially hard for Gold Star families, Pope said. She thinks frequently about all the things her cousin, Jeremiah, missed out on. He would have been 40 this year. What would he have been like if he were alive today?
Pope says Betti and McColley’s statue is unique in how real it reflects and encapsulates what they felt. It brings back memories, too, both touching and aching.
Pope struggled to find the words to describe the events surrounding Jeremiah’s loss.
She couldn’t say it, but she could feel it.
This story was originally published December 6, 2025 at 5:16 PM with the headline "WA teen’s moving tribute to fallen hero families. ‘Deserve to be honored’."
