LINCOLN, Maine — It’s a scene right of a Hollywood blockbuster.
An American army helicopter is shot down in a dusty African city. Four crew members are badly injured. Hostile crowds surge toward the helpless crew. Two Special Forces snipers fly above in another Black Hawk volunteer to protect them. Their commanders deny them the mission, but the men persist. With a mixture of awe and sadness, their commanders agree. The snipers drop to the ground. They fight bravely and are killed, but the pilot of the shot down helicopter lives.
“Most people, when you say ‘Operation: Gothic Serpent,’ they have no idea what you’re talking about, but when you say ‘Black Hawk Down,’ it plugs them right into it,” Gary Bies, a member of the Marine Corps League Greater Lincoln Area Detachment 976, said.
Bies said people don’t always know that one of the key characters in that fact-based 2002 Ridley Scott film is Lincoln native Gary Gordon, even though there’s an immaculately-kept monument dedicated to him in front of the town office on Main Street.
Bies and a group of volunteers want to change that. They hope to raise $120,000 by 2018, the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu, to build a lifesize bronze sculpture of Gordon, a U.S. Army master sergeant who was awarded a Medal of Honor as one of the snipers who saved downed pilot Michael Durant.
“Gary Gordon is a legend among Special Operations forces,” said Marc Diana, a New York resident who hunts in Lincoln annually and who initiated the fundraising.
“His name is awe-inspiring among the Special Forces community,” Diana added. “The actions he and [fellow sniper Sgt. First Class Randy Shughart] took that day, everybody aspires to that. Nobody wants that to be their mission, but given the opportunity, they hope they would react the way [Gordon and Shughart] did.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage and first lady Ann LePage made a $5,000 contribution at the memorial’s second fundraiser, “An Evening Honoring Hometown Heroes” concert at Mattanawcook Academy on Saturday. The first fundraiser was a 5K road race in August in Lincoln that raised about $2,200, Diana said.
The LePages promised another $5,000 if the committee matched their first donation, according to Don Worcester, a former School Administrative District 67 board chairman and volunteer fundraiser. The event produced at least $2,000 in pledges immediately.
Fundraising totals are still being compiled, Diana said.
The fundraisers have created a Facebook page, Gary Gordon MOH Memorial, that had 3,207 members as of Wednesday.
The monument will join the veterans memorial off West Broadway and Prospect Avenue near Bangor Savings Bank, Worcester said.
“It’s going to blend in with what we have,” Richard Tolman, another Detachment 976 member, said.
That blend, Tolman said, is crucial: The goal of the memorial is to honor the heroism of Gordon, who is buried in the cemetery off West Broadway, not overshadow other veterans’ service or sacrifices.
The monument, the volunteers said, also is about the majestic self-sacrifice of an American hero, the first awarded a Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War.
It will likely not capture the political and military machinations of the Somalia peace mission. Eighteen American soldiers and several hundred Somalis were killed. The bodies of the dead Black Hawk crewmen were dragged through the streets.
“These are America’s legends. These are names that should live on in history forever,” Diana said. “My whole idea is that some kid playing ball 500 years from now will come upon the memorial and say, ‘Wow, that man is from here?’”
Anyone interested in assisting the fundraising effort can email Bies at gbusmc@gmail.com or they can visit the Facebook page dedicated to it, Gary Gordon MOH Memorial.