DUBOIS – The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in cooperation with the local Women’s Liaison Committee will honor fallen U.S. military personnel and Iraqi civilians with its traveling exhibition: Eyes Wide Open: The Cost of War to Pennsylvania, which will be on display at the Penn State DuBois Campus on April 18 from 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. The exhibit will close with a candlelight ceremony from 6 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Eyes Wide Open: The Cost of War to Pennsylvania focuses on the specific costs of war to the state of Pennsylvania. The exhibit includes 183 pairs of boots representing fallen servicemen and women from Pennsylvania, and a visual representation of the Iraqi civilian casualties. This exhibit is part of AFSC’s national Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War network.
AFSC, an international social justice organization, created Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War to illustrate the lives lost in the war in Iraq. It first opened in Chicago’s Federal Plaza with just over 500 pairs of boots in January 2004. The national exhibit was last displayed on Memorial Day weekend 2007 with over 3,400 pairs of boots. This was the last time that the entire death toll was represented in one location. Since then the exhibition has been divided into state displays and traveled throughout the nation to smaller cities and towns. All the state exhibits combined now include more than 183 pairs of combat boots representing U.S. military casualties, along with a memorial to the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed in the conflict.
