Honoring the Legacy, Future of Memorial Coliseum

The speech below was presented by University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto at the Grand Re-Opening of Memorial Coliseum on Saturday, April 26, 2025.

A video recording of this speech is available to view here.  You can view all the speakers here. 

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His tools were simple…

A steel-nibbed pen, an inkwell and blank panels of paper nearly five feet long and four feet wide.

From September 1949 to March 1950, Professor Horine's desk became a kind of altar.

Beneath the steady glow of a drafting lamp, he dipped his pen, again and again, into the midnight ink.

Like a prayer in motion, Professor Horine inscribed the names of Kentucky's fallen World War Two heroes...one by one...line by line...not just a list, but a litany — carrying the weight of a state's grief.

Among those nearly 10,000 names is Franklin Sousley. 

Franklin, a native of Hilltop, Kentucky, helped tend the tobacco fields and care for his family after his father died. 

He graduated high school at 17 and soon after, he became a marine. 

Franklin was just a boy…18 when he shipped out. 

And by 19 he was halfway around the world crawling through the black sands of Iwo Jima. 

Easy Company landed on that small island on February 19th, 1945. 

Franklin and the rest of the 28th regiment of the fifth marine division spent the next four days trudging inland as curtains of rain pelted them. 

But on the morning of February 23rd, the rain cleared, and the clouds lifted, revealing Mount Suribachi — black, volcanic, scarred...looming over the beach where the marines landed under fire just days before. 

That morning, a patrol was sent up the mountain with a small American flag and a simple command...

"If you get to the top, put it up." 

And they did. 

The American flag rose for the first time over Iwo Jima, and the island erupted with cheers instead of artillery. 

But the Japanese held the tunnels beneath Suribachi and swarmed the celebrating marines. 

Still, it was over in minutes…no loss of American life. 

And the flag remained standing.

Witnessing what happened from afar, the secretary of the Navy was so deeply moved he requested to take the flag as a souvenir.

Easy Company, however, were not satisfied with that...they bled for that flag. 

So, the regimental commander gave the order to replace it…“and make it bigger," he said. 

A new patrol of six was sent up the charred mountain face with a replacement — bigger, bolder and renewed in purpose after being salvaged from a sinking ship at Pearl Harbor. 

And what happened next was unceremonious — just marines completing another task. 

Two of them found a heavy pipe and dragged it over the rubble to a third, who was holding the neatly folded flag with reverence and resolve.

Then together, the six young men quietly began to raise the flag for a second time. 

Catching the movement out of the corner of his eye, photographer Joe Rosenthal quickly turned his lens on instinct, worried he'd miss it. 

In 1/400th of a second, without even looking, the shutter clicked...No framing...no retakes...just the raw contrast between the everlasting glory of that image and the brevity of the lives that made it monumental.

And then, it was over. 

The young men piled rocks around the base of the pole and went back to work, unaware that their impromptu ritual would become one of the most recognizable images in the world...one for all time:

Six marines. Tired, sweaty, caked in the muck and ash of the battlefield...caught mid-motion, raising the American flag. 

And one of them, reaching above his head with both hands steadying the very center of the pole, is 19-year-old Franklin Sousley of Hilltop, Kentucky. 

He later wrote to his mother, "Look for my picture — I helped put the flag up." 

But one month later, Franklin was cut down in battle by a sniper.

Franklin and his fellow marines didn't know they'd never get to see that photo. 

They didn't even know it was being taken at the time. 

In that moment, they only knew the weight of the flag...of sacrifice and hope...the feeling of the rough pipe against their palms...the motion of lifting — of raising a thing worth holding onto...an ideal worth dying for. 

Today, a statue immortalizing that moment stands in Arlington, Virginia atop a granite mount with an inscription reading, 

"Uncommon valor was a common virtue." 

Uncommon valor was a common virtue... 

These lives, and these moments — the raw and deeply human ones, born not out of spectacle but of calling — are not meant to fade. 

They are meant to be preserved…revered…immortalized…

Not only for what and who they were but for what they ask of us now…

To remember…

Because while those young heroes believed some things must be defended, they believed even fiercer that some must never happen again…

That is what they died for…To end the extermination of people…to restore democracies…

They fought against regimes that first burned books…

Then tore down truth…

Then stoked fear and hatred…

Then ripped families apart…

Then torched temples of worship…

Then rained fire from the sky…

Then rounded up the Jews, the Roma, the gay and disabled and put them on trains destined for death…

In the death camps, millions waited behind barbed wire, stripped of their humanity but clinging on to their personhood with hope…

Not knowing that deliverance would come in the form of boys — from Illinois and Idaho…Kansas and Kentucky…crawling through the mud to get to them…to liberate them. 

When the world was splintering, these brave souls became the hinge of history…defending the idea that every human life has worth…no matter how it worships…or where it’s lived…or who it loves…

With this beautiful, newly renovated memorial — the names of Kentucky's fallen heroes as inscribed by professor Horine from World War Two, the Korean and Vietnam Wars and subsequent military service that used to hang in the walls of these hallowed halls — are now etched into metal, anchored in stone and placed right outside. 

And those names out there?...

That is a roll call of the righteous. 

We carve names in places we pass so legacy meets us where we live...so we can look on with reverence for those righteous souls who made the ultimate sacrifice as the greatest generation. 

And just beyond those etched names, another piece of history stands.
A marker — strong in presence and purpose — acknowledging a story we must also carry.

Long before Memorial Coliseum was built, this ground was home to Adamstown — a vibrant Black community whose residents helped build the very foundation of this university and this city.

Families lived here…worshipped here…watched football games on porches across from the stadium they weren’t allowed to enter.

And among them — Pierre Whiting, known to students as “Dean Whiting” — is believed to be the first African American employed by the university. 

He carried water and mortar for the construction of Main Building in 1888 and ultimately, he became its keeper for 57 years.

He was a fixture of our campus. A witness to our history — and a contributor to it — at a time when so many were excluded from its telling.

The memorial that now honors Adamstown and Mr. Whiting is not a correction of history, but an extension of our commitment to tell it fully…

Because love of place requires truth…

And remembering requires courage…not just to honor the valor of those who served, but to face the realities of who and what was neglected along the way.

As Professor Horine made his way through the seemingly unending list, he came across a name he knew by heart.

Corporal John Horine. 

Lost over the Adriatic Sea. 

20 years old. 

Never recovered. 

And yet, just as he had done thousands of times before, Professor Horine dipped his steel-nibbed pen in the midnight ink and wrote the name of his eldest son with no greater flourish, no heavier hand than any other. 

They were all some mother and father's child...

They were all sons of Kentucky. 

That is the quiet truth of this memorial…

That what binds these names is not how they died but how they were loved…how they are honored. 

And love and duty — when bound together — become something holy.

During the Memorial Coliseum dedication in 1950, President Donovan remarked, "This is a house…This is Kentucky's Coliseum…It belongs to the people." 

For 160 years, we have served Kentucky and her people with deep fidelity to our mission. 

Through wars and recessions, pandemics and deep division, we remain standing. 

We've helped our Commonwealth get healthier, wealthier, wiser...and we will continue to advance that mission because that is what we were created to do.

That is our enduring promise as Kentucky's university.

And that is the power of people coming together, united by common purpose, to do uncommonly good and important things.