Fairbury, Jefferson County officially unveil new veterans memorial

FAIRBURY, Neb. - Jefferson County and Fairbury officially unveiled a new veterans memorial on Monday.

On Monday afternoon, the community celebrated and honored veterans with the new memorial in the city park.

Fairbury City Museum President Mick Suey has sponsored the project, that’s been in works for about a year. He told News Channel Nebraska that he got the idea for the memorial from his time at the museum, in addition to inspiration from other monuments and memorials across the state.

“Being at the museum, you start reading names and places of who they [veterans] were and where they served, where they were from,” Suey said. “When my son was playing baseball, I would travel to different communities and you’d see monuments similar to this one and I thought it was something Jefferson County needed.”

A unique piece of the monument is a rectangular plaque, with names of each town Jefferson County veterans called home -- some of which don’t even exist anymore.

“Jefferson County was founded by in 1856 and some of those communities don’t exist any longer,” Suey said. “But throughout their time span, there were men, sometimes women, who came from those communities and served. Wanted every community in Jefferson County honored.”