By Mary L. Grady

The cloudless, still and frigid Saturday morning at Mercerdale Park made a perfect setting for honoring the dead. As the sun rose on the hundreds of markers placed in memory of those who died serving their country in Iraq, people came to witness and perhaps to hope.

The Mercer Island Peacemakers, along with an Eastside group called Evergreen Peace and Justice, and another group called Veterans for Peace, installed 1,520 white markers in a precise grid in the frosty grass in Mercerdale Park. Each marker represented a soldier who died in Iraq.

The installation is the 15th of its kind in the Puget Sound region since the first was set up in front of the Redmond City Hall last May. Similar memorials have sprouted up across the country.

More than a dozen volunteers from Mercer Island joined those from the Eastside and Seattle to set up the traveling memorial. They worked quietly, bent to the task, adjusting the slim wires that held the markers upright, rubber-banding the slips of papers with names in place.

A tame white tippler pigeon settled in next to a marker, unperturbed by the people nearby — perhaps it was a sign, the volunteers mused.

Gary Davis, a Vietnam veteran and event organizer from Redmond, said that the memorial is very powerful for him personally.

“Hopefully this will provide common ground for everyone to consider,” he said of the memorial. “It doesn’t have a point of view.”

The organizers said that the turnout of Islanders was the best local help they have had. More than a dozen came to volunteer.

Islanders Dixie Stanton, Lari and Ric Power, Sharon Smith and Don Mochel, also a Vietnam vet, were at the park at dawn to help out. Despite the freezing temperatures, and soggy footwear, they said they were not cold.

Leslie Zukor, a 2003 Mercer Island High School graduate, now taking a year off from college, was also up early to help.

“I read about it in the paper,” she said. “I’m 20. … Most of those killed are my age, it has hit me hard. They haven’t even lived yet.”

A woman walking on the path nearby could be heard talking on her cell phone, “There are rows and rows of crosses,” she said into the phone. “The whole field is covered in them.”

Three men on their usual morning walk came by.

“It took us by surprise,” one said.

“We are still trying to digest it,” said another. When told of the purpose of the memorial, the men agreed it made sense.

Mark Pawlosky and his two sons, Ben 8, and Will, 5, were heading for an early morning haircut when they came upon the memorial. They stopped and got out of their car to see what it was all about.

“Ben said, `A lot of people have died in Iraq,”’ Pawlosky said.

As the shadows made by the markers lengthened into the afternoon, people came with their cameras and children to see what it was all about.

Island Peacemaker and activist Ric Power who stayed all day at the park, said that by 3 p.m. he figured about 300 people had come by. Reactions had been positive, he said.

U.S. Army combat medic Sgt. Michael Glasglow, 24, who served in Iraq for 14 months, came to see if the 13 soldiers killed in his unit were on the list of the dead.

He found all but two of his “brothers” in the book kept by the memorial organizers. He wrote out their names on a slip of paper and bent to place each on a marker. He straightened up and saluted each.

He said that the memorial was a good thing. It gives everyone a different perspective on what is happening in the Middle East. It shows that people care about the soldiers, no matter what they think of the war, he said.

And he wants people to know that the soldiers did not die in vain.

“I truly believe that we are fighting (against) terrorism and (for) our country,” he said. “Sad as it is, it needs to be done.”