This year, 6,920 pairs of boots, each with an American flag, a picture of a fallen military member, and a description of how they died, lined the grass of Roger Williams Park over Memorial Day weekend as part of Operation Stand Down Rhode Island’s (OSDRI) now annual commemoration of fallen soldiers.

Executive director of OSDRI Erik Wallin, speaking about the event Friday morning, said he expected thousands of people to come through over the weekend to visit the site from across the country, and particularly the New England region.

“It’s very much a regional attraction at this point,” Wallin said.  “Groups of people come through here and can spend as much time as they like walking through.  They can also see it in 20 minutes, so there’s a constant flow over the course of the weekend.”

One of those visitors on Friday was Denise Marsinko, who lives in Edgewood with her husband George.  Their son, Scott Marsinko, is in the army reserves right now and just applied to the Pennsylvania National Guard.  He’s a 2016 graduate of the Valley Forge Military College in Pennsylvania, Denise said.

Scott is also a graduate of the Cranston East JROTC program, which Denise credits with “saving his life.”  While there, he was captain of the drill team, the marksmanship team, and the raider team.

“He was one of the bullied at school, and he decided enough is enough,” she said.  “He always wanted to go into the military since fourth grade, when he came home from school and looked at me and goes, ‘Mom, I want to be a soldier when I grow up.’  And here is at 23 years old, a graduate of Valley Forge.”

She also said that Scott had already visited the park on Thursday afternoon to pay tribute to the fallen soldiers.  One of the flags that he stumbled upon was for a Lt. Thifault, who a scholarship at Valley Forge is named after.  Marsinko received that scholarship, which allowed him to attend and graduate, Denise said.

Denise also said she is part of a support group for Rhode Island mothers whose children are in the military, Rhode Island Blue Star Moms, which can be found on Facebook.

Another set of visitors on Friday was Betsy Beach, of Providence, and her granddaughter Beatrix Slater, of Cranston.  Beach said her father, and Slater’s great-grandfather, was a veteran of World War II, and she wanted to bring her granddaughter by the boots to “get a visual to remember” what Memorial Day weekend means.

Part of the reason they’ve done this for three years now, Wallin said, is to “remind” people what the meaning of Memorial Day is.

“It’s a quick way for people to come by and remind themselves what Memorial Day is about,” he said.  “It’s not just about the barbecues and the sales at home depot.”

He said that the idea behind the Boots on the Ground event came from Dee DeQuattro Rothermel, who is now a member of the Rhode Island National Guard and whose husband did three tours in Iraq.  For them, this was a way for people to connect to something physical without having to visit the gravesites of fallen soldiers, many of which are in far-away states.

He said that doing this every year is a “huge logistics operation” because they have to store the boots, move them around, and keep them clean, along with the flags and descriptions of the soldiers.  He said that last year’s flags got rain in them while in storage and had to be thrown out because of mold, but Ocean State Job Lot donated the nearly 7,000 new flags, which are bigger so they won’t get blown over as easy.

To set up the flags, Wallin said it’s a two-and-a-half day process to first grid the field with the OSDRI staff, then use hundreds of volunteers, some of whom are gold star family members and many of which come from partnering companies, to put down the boots and flags before it’s opened up to the public on Friday.

Volunteers are also needed to keep the flags/boots upright over the weekend, which is where James Rogers, a member of the Patriot Guard Riders, came in. Rogers, who lives in West Greenwich, said his group volunteers their time to do flag linings for funerals and ceremonies across the state, including this one.

29 of the 6,920 flags that they set up represent fallen soldiers from Rhode Island, which are at the front of the setup in a circle.  The rest, Wallin said, are organized alphabetically by state, Alabama through Wyoming, and alphabetically by last name within those rows.  This way, he explained, it’s easy for people from all over to come by and find a particular person.

Each boot also has a tag affixed to them with a photo of the soldiers, along with a description that includes where they’re from, what branch they served in, what unit they served in, and how they died.

On Monday night, the commemoration continued with a military concert, a laser show, and foot trucks set up by the Temple of Music.

Wallin said that OSDRI is a year-round non-profit that cares for homeless and at-risk veterans.  They raise money through fundraising, including the “Gold Star Gala” that took place last week, and were collecting money at the boots event over the weekend, which he said was needed to pay for the event’s expenses.

In terms of long-term plans for the Boots on the Ground, Wallin wants to start taking it across country so people can take in this event that is now limited to Rhode Island.