Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Wall

The Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Wall is the city's memorial to Duval County service members who died in the country's wars. According to the City of Jacksonville Military Affairs and Veterans Department, the wall stands at 1145 East Adams Street, next to EverBank Stadium, and is a 65-foot-long black granite monument that honors over 1,700 Jacksonville-area service members from World War I through the War on Terror. It sits on the east end of downtown Jacksonville, in the stretch of public land along Adams Street that also holds the stadium, the arena and the ballpark.

The city calls it the second-largest veterans memorial in the nation, behind only the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and says it is the only wall that recognizes veterans from all seven branches: the Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine. At the heart of the memorial stands a torch with an eternal flame. Unlike the Washington wall, which is limited to a single war, the Jacksonville wall runs across every American war of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and its list keeps growing. New names go onto the granite each Memorial Day at a ceremony run by the city, which is why the count on East Adams Street has climbed past the figure carved for the 1995 dedication.

The wall is a product of the mid-1990s. Visit Jacksonville records that the quarter-million dollar monument was dedicated in November, 1995 as a tribute to more than 1,700 Jacksonville-area war dead. At the time it was promoted as the largest of its kind and as the only wall that honors veterans from all six service branches then counted: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine. The American Legion, which keeps a national registry of veterans memorials, lists the Duval County Veterans Memorial Wall with an installation date of 10 Nov 1995, names the City of Jacksonville as the organization responsible for installation, and lists its war eras as WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon/Grenada, Panama and the Persian Gulf. The Legion registry rates its condition as good.

Two changes followed. First, the wall was rededicated on its 20-year anniversary in November 2015, according to Visit Jacksonville. Second, the branch count moved from six to seven. The Space Force did not exist in 1995, and the current City of Jacksonville page now lists it beside the six branches named at the dedication. The war list moved as well: the wall's own description now runs from World War I through the War on Terror, so Duval County service members lost after 2001 are listed on the same East Adams Street granite as the World War I dead.

The surroundings changed too. When 104.5 WOKV described the site in May 2019, it placed the wall between the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville and TIAA Bank Field. The stadium has since taken the EverBank Stadium name used on the city's page in 2026, but the wall has not moved from its spot on East Adams Street.

The City of Jacksonville sets the rules. On its wall page, the Military Affairs and Veterans Department, known as MAVD, says families and community members may nominate a fallen service member, and lists the eligibility criteria. The service member must have been on active duty at the time of death. The service member must have had legal residence in Duval County, as determined by the Supervisor of Elections, Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, or the Tax Collector, or must have attended a Duval County high school. The death must have come during a declared U.S. war, and the city adds a conduct condition about the circumstances of the death.

The nomination itself is a form on the MAVD wall page at jacksonville.gov. It asks for the service member's name, branch of service, the dates of entering and leaving service, rank, military occupational specialty and the high school attended, along with the contact details of the person nominating and that person's relation to the nominee. The department then adds approved names at the next Memorial Day ceremony; the city states that new names are added each year during that ceremony to recognize those who have fallen in the defense of freedom.

Names are not limited to recent deaths. WOKV reported in May 2019 that two of the four names added that year belonged to Vietnam veterans. Harrison Conyers of MAVD told the station that the omission was not deliberate: their obituaries did not run in Jacksonville when the wall was first built, so they were missed. That history is why the city keeps the nomination form open for older wars as well as current ones.

The city publishes the full list. The Veterans Memorial Wall Search on jacksonville.gov lets anyone look up a name by last name, first name, middle initial, war, branch of service, panel, high school and Medal of Honor status. Read as a table, it shows how the granite is laid out. The World War I names come first, on the lowest-numbered panels. Many World War II names are grouped by the Jacksonville high school each service member attended, with Duval High School, Andrew Jackson High School, Julia Landon High School, Robert E. Lee High School, Baldwin High School and The Bolles School all appearing in the panel listings. Other entries carry the words Home of Record instead of a school. Korean War names start on Panel 12A, and Vietnam War names follow on later panels.

The branch codes in the Jacksonville listing reflect the wall's broad reach. Alongside the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, the search shows Merchant Marine, Coast Guard, Navy Reserve and Army Air Forces abbreviations from World War II, and a handful of World War I and World War II entries coded ARC and SPAR. A separate group in the database is labeled Added after September 1, 1995, which holds the names engraved after the original panels were cut, including the Vietnam names added in 2019 and the War on Terror names added at recent ceremonies. Another group is labeled Global War on Terrorism. For a family in Arlington, the Westside or the Beaches, the search is the practical way to find a panel number before walking the 65 feet of granite.

The city's Memorial Day Observance at the wall is the main public event of the year for Jacksonville's veterans. The City of Jacksonville describes it as a gathering of Gold Star families, veterans, military leaders, elected officials and community members, held each Memorial Day, at which the year's new names are added. In 2019 WOKV reported that the observance started at 8:30 a.m., that family members of the fallen would speak, and that the city would also mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day that year with four D-Day veterans expected in attendance.

News coverage shows the shape of the morning. In May 2018, News4JAX reported that six new names were added to the almost 1,700 on Jacksonville's Veterans Memorial Wall, that wreaths were laid representing every branch of the military, that an Army band played and that there was a 21-gun salute. Gov. Rick Scott, Mayor Lenny Curry and U.S. Reps. Al Lawson and John Rutherford were among the speakers that year. On May 30, 2022, News4JAX reported that the city added four names, that service wreaths were placed in front of the wall, and that the Navy Band Southeast and the Jacksonville Children's Chorus performed. Tributes from the Marine Corps, the National POW and a U.S. color guard were part of the 2022 program, and the event was free.

The timing is part of the local calendar. In the 2019 WOKV report, Conyers described the ceremony as a chance for Jacksonville residents to stop and remember before heading to the beach on the holiday. The MAVD website kept a Memorial Day 2026 photo gallery from the most recent observance as of October 2026.

The wall belongs to the consolidated City of Jacksonville and is run by the Military Affairs and Veterans Department, whose office is in City Hall at 117 West Duval Street, Suite 175. The department offers free help to veterans with benefits claims, employment, housing and legal aid, and the wall and its ceremony sit alongside that casework. Its director as of October 9, 2026, Harrison Conyers, is responsible for citywide military and veterans special events, including the Memorial Day Observance and the Veterans Day Breakfast, and serves as the city's military liaison to all commands in Duval County, according to his city biography. In 2019 WOKV identified Bill Spann as the department's director at that time. Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the City of Jacksonville website.

The wall is one piece of a larger veterans presence around the downtown sports complex. The neighboring arena carries the name VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, and the Veterans Council of Duval County administers a trust fund created through the naming rights agreement between VyStar Credit Union and the City of Jacksonville. Grants from that fund range from $500 to $10,000 for veterans service organizations in Duval County that serve local veterans. The council meets monthly at American Legion Post 137 on San Juan Avenue, a reminder that the wall on East Adams Street is the public face of a network of Jacksonville veterans groups that work year round.