A nearly $80,000 Vietnam memorial is not coming to Westminster despite being planned for over a decade.

City Manager Jody Andrews announced to the City Council on Dec. 15 that the National Lao Hmong Memorial Foundation has decided to relocate its planned memorial away from the city’s Armed Forces Tribute Garden.

The memorial was set to honor the Lao and Hmong people — U.S. allies who fought a “secret war” against the communist North Vietnamese between 1961 and 1975 — and construction funding was scheduled to be secured by the foundation by Dec. 31.

The foundation would foot the bill and the city would host the memorial and upkeep maintenance.

The memorial was set to be a fully restored T-28 Trojan Warbird plane placed 15 feet off of the ground, according to the city report.

The aircraft was crucial to the Lao-Hmong War, with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) providing the planes and training to the tribe to fight communism in Laos.

“40,000 Hmong soldiers and airmen and 727 Americans died during the Secret War and 50,000 Hmong civilians were killed or wounded,” the foundation said on its website.

Col. Bob Resling first contacted Westminster in 2006 to establish the memorial due to both the tribute garden and large population of Hmong people in the city.

Resling passed away in 2010 before an official agreement was set. It was later revisited in 2023 and a resolution was passed. The first amendment to the agreement was passed in 2024, giving the foundation until the end of 2025 to secure the funds, according to the city.

In another twist of fate, the plane set to be memorialized crashed on May 17 in Yuba County, Calif., injuring the pilot and passenger.

“There has been a series of unfortunate events,” Andrews told the council.

The foundation told the city in November that it was weighing other options, and with time running out for funding securement in Westminster, the plane has likely moved to another park.

The foundation did not say what city it is being shifted over to. The Denver Gazette reached out for comment but did not hear back by the time of this report.

“Staff has worked to keep the door open if there is a future interest
in exploring a revised approach to honoring the Lao-Hmong people and their contributions to the United States during the Vietnam War and beyond,” Andrews said.