The granite is cut. The names are etched. The San Ysidro War Memorial is sitting in a contractor’s shop on Imperial Avenue, ready to go. All Jack Gechter needs is someone to lay the concrete and put it in the ground.
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And although the path ahead finally looks clear, it’s proven to be anything but simple.
The road to rebuild and install a long-lost World War II honor wall outside the San Ysidro library has been long and winding — years of grassroots fundraising, community organizing and a partnership with the City of San Diego that has had more than a few bumps along the way.
On June 1, a City of San Diego Parks and Recreation engineer emailed Gechter and other members of the committee spearheading the installation that the city’s Citywide Maintenance team had declined to perform the installation, citing the monument’s weight, height and narrow profile as exceeding the team’s expertise. The committee was told to hire its own contractor and licensed engineer, and that a Right of Entry permit would be required.
“The team genuinely tried to make this work but ultimately determined that the installation falls outside the expertise and experience required for a project of this scale,” the email said. “Unfortunately, my role is limited to supporting projects performed by our Parks and Recreation team, so I am unable to provide design or construction support for work completed by a third party.”
The announcement came just weeks before a planned July 3 dedication ceremony — and roughly two years after the committee first began working with the city.
“Here we thought we were rounding third base heading for home and all of a sudden — you’re out,” said Gechter. “That’s the way we felt. Just like a big letdown. A major letdown.”
In a statement to The San Diego Union-Tribune, however, a city spokesperson pushed back on that characterization, saying Parks and Recreation had not withdrawn from the project, but was instead working to procure a contractor with the appropriate machinery and equipment to handle an installation that city staff alone could not perform.
“The City has not pulled out of this project,” the statement read.
Then, on June 26 — one day after Councilmember Vivian Moreno and her chief of staff Gerardo Ramirez attended the committee’s Friends of San Ysidro luncheon — the city’s position shifted again, this time more decisively.
Enrique Duran, a Parks and Recreation district manager, emailed Gechter and the full committee to say that Parks and Recreation would be taking the lead on coordinating the installation.
“I have confirmed that (the) Parks and Recreation Department will be taking the lead on coordinating the installation of the monument,” Duran wrote to Gether and the committee in his email. “At this time, there is no need for your group to obtain a contractor or Right of Entry (ROE) permit.”
Duran went on to say the same engineer who had sent the June 1 email would serve as the city’s lead on the project going forward, working on funding and installation logistics.
The City of San Diego has not responded to a request for comment on the reversal.
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For over a decade, Gechter and a core group of community members have led a grassroots effort to rebuild the memorial listing 147 names of men and women from the small border community who served their country.
Originally erected by a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post around 1947 and removed — according to a December 2024 memo from Moreno to Mayor Todd Gloria — “without permission in 1953 by unknown individuals,” the wall was lost to history until a single wallet-sized sepia photograph surfaced decades later.
That photo appeared around 2014, when Charlie Velazquez — now 93 and president of the Friends of San Ysidro luncheon group — found it in a trunk of his late parents’ belongings. Since then, he’s worked alongside Gechter to make the memorial a reality.
“It is something that has to be done,” Velazquez said. “Not just for the satisfaction of us, the living, but for the satisfaction of the men and women, their families, who served our community and their country.”
Among the 147 names on the wall were two of his brothers: Alfredo, who survived the war, and Adolfo, a U.S. Army corporal killed April 19, 1944, during training maneuvers in Texas. He was 24.
Velazquez, who grew up three blocks from the library site, still remembers walking past the original memorial as a boy — and the knock on the door that told his family Adolfo wasn’t coming home.
“It stayed with me for quite a few years,” he said. “Anytime I heard taps being played, it really hurt.”
The remake, a 6-foot-tall granite monument fabricated in India, was shipped to Conti and Sons — a memorial manufacturer on Imperial Avenue — and has been waiting there since around December. The committee has raised approximately $25,000, with $18,000 already committed to fabrication costs.
Architect Ben Meza, a San Ysidro native volunteering independently of his employer, has secured an engineer willing to work pro bono on the foundation design if needed.
The committee continues to accept donations through a GoFundMe campaign and expects additional costs even after installation, as newly identified names will be added to the monument’s reverse side. A grand opening tied to Veterans Day is now being considered — enough time, the group hopes, to do it right.
For Gechter, the mission is equally personal. A Vietnam-era Marine Corps veteran, he lost a cousin, Samuel Wolfsdorf, in the Korean War.
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“I owe it to the 147 men and women who served to complete the task,” he said.
