The Pompe Park’s Veterans Plaza Memorial Park on Prince Street will be the permanent home of 645 boots honoring fallen Arkansas veterans. 

The Fallen Heroes Combat Boot display will have the names of veterans who either died in combat or died from suicide related to post-traumatic stress disorder. 

While the display had initially featured boots going back to 9/11, it has expanded to have veterans from the Vietnam War and other conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. 

On each of the laces is a name belonging to one of these veterans, whose memorial is intended to showcase the sacrifice made and the impact it leaves behind. 

City spokesman Bobby Kelly said the boots will be displayed the last weekend of September in honor of Veterans Day. 

The boots include members of all branches of the armed forces. 

Hearts of Heroes, a nonprofit organization for the families of fallen veterans, sets up the display every year. 

Its executive director, Shari Briley, has a personal connection to the boots. 

Briley’s husband, Donovan “Bull” Briley, was a pilot in the Army Reserve. He was deployed with the 160th Special Operations Regiment to Somalia as a member of Task Force Ranger. 

On Oct. 3, 1993, he was killed in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, during what would later be known as the Black Hawk Down incident. 

Hearts of Heroes was founded in 2013 by Andrea Fisher, who said the organization’s main goal is ensuring the names of each family’s lost loved one is not forgotten, but instead memorialized. 

Kelly said having the display at Veterans Plaza is a good representation of the community coming together to build something meaningful. 

“The idea was to honor veterans past, present and future,” Kelly said of Veterans Plaza. “To create a place that can host events.”

Kelly reiterated the importance of Veterans Plaza, saying “We needed to have something in addition to what we already had. So, ideas blended together and you can see what we have today.”

Kelly said Veterans Plaza had originally been planned to be at the roundabout of Ferris and Prince streets, but was instead moved to Pompe Park because of logistic and cost issues. 

“[We wanted] to take something circular like that and incorporate it with those existing ideas and concepts,” Kelly said. “Then blend it together with what we had wanted to do at Pompe Park. And that’s where it ended up.” 

Kelly said Veterans Plaza is a bigger piece of Pompe Park, which is planned to be built out in two phases – one east and one west of Tucker Creek. 

The Plaza is also connected to Kinley Trail, which will be further expanded during the Connect Conway project in coming years. 

Connect Conway is a project to create a 15-mile trail throughout Conway, connecting various universities, parks and shopping/commercial centers. 

The project is funded through a $24.6 million dollar grant from the United States Department of Transportation.  

“If you create places for people to go on foot or on bike, then business then adapts to have street-facing elements and a trail-facing element,” Kelly said. “It’s about creating more pedestrian travel and making business more pedestrian accessible.”