The Veteran

Downtown Puyallup hosts quite a lot of nice sculpture for a fairly small city, including this life-sized representation of a war veteran who could be from almost any era. He strikes me as a farm boy, perhaps because the Puyallup Valley was largely farmland at one time, but he could be any man or Everyman. His sculpted expression leaves much room for interpretation, a shining example demonstrating that the purpose of Art is to raise questions in the minds of viewers. In full view, he is half-kneeling, one arm stretched downward as if to a fallen comrade, but today, it was a small cloth American flag almost at his fingertips, left there by some city worker or a passerby.