Mini-Arlington remembrances spring up in other cities

Row after row, more than 3,400 white crosses stand in a Statesville, N.C., park this weekend, offering a silent salute to every American who has died in Iraq.

Near the front is one with the name Steven Sirko, a 20-year-old Army private who died in 2005, three months after arriving. He's buried a few blocks away.

His mother, Summer Lipford of Statesville, organized the elaborate memorial. Called Arlington South, it's modeled after similar tributes elsewhere.

With the help of friends, she spent two weeks building and painting the crosses. They pounded them into a grassy clearing near a creek in Mac Anderson Park near downtown Friday. The crosses will stay through Monday.

For Lipford, 53, the memorial is a tribute to her son as well as other sons and daughters.

"These crosses are going to stand as if our soldiers were standing there," she said.

As preparations wrap up for Memorial Day ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, D.C., a growing number of mournful mock-ups such as Lipford's have sprouted in parks and on beaches this weekend. The anti-war group Veterans for Peace has set up artificial Arlingtons in Philadelphia; Traverse City, Mich.; Blaine, Wash.; and Miami Beach. In Houston, the group's members have constructed a memorial with 4,000 flags, each representing a casualty of war.

In Reno, Nev., another group, Sierra Interfaith Action for Peace, will read the name and plant a flag in the grass for each fallen service member.