Honoring a Local Hero
Army Spc. Eric T. Burri’s Story
Do life’s challenges make heroes or reveal heroes? Army Spc. Eric Burri was killed while serving in Iraq, but his parents, John and Joanne Burri, kept his memory alive by rallying an entire Midwest community to help Iraqi children. Eric’s life and his parents’ example of how to turn overwhelming grief into an opportunity to help others inspired my ArtPrize Top 20 work called Hometown Hero:
“Dad, I’m not afraid to die.”
Eric’s picture rests between two angel figurines. Another tiny photo of Eric with a small American flag hangs from the center of the kitchen curtain rod. His dad remembers when Eric announced with a smile, “Dad, I did it. I joined.” The next day he graduated from high school.
“The military taught Eric a lot,” said his dad. “Eric started understanding that life wasn’t just about him; it was about others too.” While deployed to Iraq, Eric noticed the Iraqi children who didn’t have shoes. He wrote home, “Mom, if I could, I would give them the shoes off my feet.”
His father continued, “In May of 2005, Eric came home for a short visit and took his sweetheart shopping to look at diamond rings. He only had five more months left to serve in Iraq. A few weeks later, on Tuesday, June 7, a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad and killed Eric.
“To honor Eric’s love for the Iraqi children, we collected thousands of shoes and sent them to Iraq,” said his dad as he wiped away a tear.
For Eric and his parents, life’s most difficult challenges revealed their heroism.
Eric’s story inspired the Hometown Hero exhibit.
While on Omaha Beach, I thought of the veteran soldiers who visited my ArtPrize 2015 Hometown Hero installation. These veterans soldiers, who honored the World War II, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan fallen, made a deep impression on us—the ArtPrize visitors, my volunteers, and me, the artist. Their story of sacrifice and loss, even decades later, was profoundly visible. We all felt their grief.