For 17 years, Bubba Sorensen has spent countless hours painting a large boulder in Adair County with patriotic themes. This year, a side of the Freedom Rock will be painted to honor veterans of the Vietnam War. Sorensen says the paint on that portion is infused with the cremated ashes of Vietnam War veterans. The tradition started when he was visited by a group of bikers traveling from the West Coast to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. in 2006. “I was painting and it was windy and they said ‘Can we sprinkle some ashes? We would like to leave some of our Vietnam veteran war brothers here’, and I said, ‘Well, that would be great, but they’re probably just going to blow away in the wind. Why don’t you dump them in the green paint and I’ll paint them on and they’ll be here forever’. They loved that idea. That spread throughout the Vietnam veteran brotherhood, so now I get ashes from all over the country and families come to witness them being put on here.”

Sorensen says the painting will be finished by Memorial Day. He’ll tell us more about the Freedom Rock today on Let’s Talk Guthrie County, which airs during the 9 a.m., noon and 5 p.m. hours on K107.9 and www.raccoonvalleyradio.com