It's been 26 years since the region's then-congressman Scott McInnis took to the House floor to declare Pueblo the Home of Heroes in recognition of its record four Medal of Honor recipients: Drew Dix and the now-deceased Jerry Murphy, Carl Sitter and Bill Crawford.

It's been 19 years since Pueblo hosted its first of two Congressional Medal of Honor Society national conventions. Ninety-six surviving Medal recipients attended that 2000 event that drew state and national attention for its school assemblies, star-studded Patriots Award gala and the unveiling of the four bronze statues of Pueblo's hometown heroes and bronze plaques listing the names of all of the nation's Medal recipients since the Civil War.

The convention's success started the community thinking more about other kinds of conventions, other veteran- and patriotism-related tourism-and-visitor possibilities and the future development of the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk of Pueblo. But the event also brought more hand-wringing over the small size of the Pueblo Convention Center and its lack of an exhibit hall, a concern of community leaders almost since the facility's opening.

Fittingly, only a week after the community celebrated the opening of the exhibit hall, Puebloans will gather again at the convention center at 10 a.m. Saturday to celebrate the expanded Medal of Honor Memorial and the new Medal of Honor Plaza. Like the exhibit hall, the expanded memorial is one of the Riverwalk improvements Pueblo pledged to build as part of its winning state Regional Tourism Act grant proposal.

"I think (visitors) are going to love it," Paulette Stuart, a spokesperson for the Pueblo Home of Heroes Association, said of the new display.

Home of Heroes

The city's first Home of Heroes initiatives began in the 1990s. Then came the successful bid for the 2000 Medal of Honor convention and the unveiling of the national memorial. The late Bob Rawlings, at the time the publisher of The Pueblo Chieftain, and his family's foundation led the list of donors who funded the bronze statues and name plaques. After the convention, the activities and attractions kept coming as the community stayed focus on the Home of Heroes theme. (The convention center also features an interactive Medal of Honor display near the main ballroom that is scheduled to be relocated and expanded in the near future.)

"There were several communities in the nation that focused totally on veterans -- San Antonio was one and Gainesboro, Texas, I think. ... We really wanted to be right up there with them with the Home of Heroes,' said Stuart, who at the time was the marketing director for The Chieftain and helped organize the community's formation of the nonprofit Home of Heroes Association and the staging of the 2000 convention.

A local couple, Doug and Pam Sterner, who came up with the Home of Heroes name and organized visits by smaller groups of Medal recipients, delved deeper into their work. Doug Sterner launched the HomeofHeroes.com website and became a military history researcher and author. Pam Sterner led the effort to craft and adopt the Stolen Valor Act signed by President George W. Bush to identify and punish fraudulent claims of military awards.

The city funded the refurbishing of the historic Memorial Hall auditorium.

Planning ramped up for patriotic-themed projects such as the donor- and grant-funded Veterans Bridge and the Center for American Values, created by the Padula family of Pueblo in a refurbished building along the Riverwalk and housing a large collection of photographic portraits of Medal recipients. Those two projects offered the dual purpose of furthering the Home of Heroes attractions while also enhancing the Riverwalk area.

"Since 2000, there's a lot more interest in veterans activities," Stuart said. "(Colorado State University-Pueblo) has been involved in veterans activities. (Pueblo Community College) has been involved. The military parades and Veterans Day activities are much more well-attended.

"And there's a lot of interest in the schools. Younger veterans are coming up and more kids have brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers who served. It's still a relevant thing to kids. It's in their lifetime," she said.

Years later, the many patriot-themed projects also would help tip the scales in Pueblo's favor in the competition among cities for a state Regional Tourism Act grant.

Riverwalk Funding

The RTA grants, introduced in the late 2000s when Colorado leaders were worried about the lingering slowdown from the recession, sought to provide millions of dollars in state sales taxes to help fund local projects that could draw out-of-state tourists. The catch: The projects needed to be novel.

Pueblo, led by the Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce, responded by packaging many of its future plans for the Riverwalk area into a single proposal. The nearer-term projects included an exhibit hall for the convention center, a parking garage and the Gatehouse Plaza outdoor activities area. Longer-term, the plan calls for an extended Riverwalk channel, an aquatics center with water park and a visitor center/boathouse.

Pueblo's Riverwalk proposal also included two projects the city hoped would meet the state's test for novelty. One was the patriotic-themed exhibits that already were in development along with the expanded Medal of Honor Memorial. The other was a first-of-its-kind Professional Bull Riders global training center. Later, a Pueblo Welcome Center/PBR Fan Zone was added.

The patriotic-themed projects made up only a slice of the Riverwalk proposal but they left an outsized impression on the state Economic Development Commission members, who in 2012 unanimously voted in support of Pueblo's grant request despite a staff recommendation to reject Pueblo's application.

One of the commission's then members, Dwayne Romero, said that, unlike the panel's staff, he thought many would find the patriotic-themed parts of the proposal distinct and appealing. For Pueblo to conceive such projects, "I think that's the reason why, frankly, they harbor so many Medal of Honor winners. It's just rich in their culture," he said.

For Puebloans, such comments echoed remarks made by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in presenting the Medal to Murphy in 1953 declared, “What is it … something in the water out there in Pueblo? All you guys turn out to be heroes!”

Rod Slyhoff, chief executive of the Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce, said the patriotic-themed projects were an integral part of Pueblo's RTA proposal.

"At that time, and I don't know if it's still true, we were one of three memorials that recognized all of the Medal of Honor recipients back to the Civil War. And with the investment that Pueblo did on its own for Veterans Bridge, and to tie in the private investment with the Center for American Values ... we were showing Pueblo's commitment" to honor the nation's heroes, he said. "It was an important component to attracting the out-of-state visitors to Pueblo. PBR was our unique piece that nobody else in the country could have but we were demonstrating to the state of Colorado that we had a lot to show visitors who came here for whatever reason."

Pueblo was selected to again host the national Congressional Medal of Honor Society convention in 2017.

About 40 Medal recipients attended. Gary Sinise & The Lt. Dan Band performed. Also in attendance were that year's recipients of the Medal of Honor Society's annual Patriot Awards: former U.S. senator Ken Salazar, author Jeff Shaara, Fox News co-host and Colorado State University-Pueblo graduate Dana Perino and William Hybl, then chairman and CEO of El Pomar Foundation.

Meanwhile, the buzz generated by the first convention and its award recipients still echoes. That year's award recipients were broadcaster Paul Harvey, newspaper cartoonist Bill Mauldin and sports greats Arnold Palmer, Brooks Robinson, David Robinson, Pat LaFontaine and Gene Fullmer. All of them made the trip.

Of the 2000 group, the late Harvey held an extra special place in Pueblo's heart. He repeatedly used his national radio show to praise Pueblo and its success of "pulling itself up by its bootstraps" after the 1980s steel industry crash ruined the local economy. If he were alive, chances are Harvey still would be saying the same thing about Pueblo.

ddarrow@chieftain.com

Twitter: @PuebloBusiness