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Lincoln Tower of Freedom rendering[/caption]
Bob Lang, the founder of
The Lang Companies and the original developer of the
Erin Hills golf course, is partnering with U.S. Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient
Jason Church to launch a memorial development business to build plaques, statues, towers and/or bells for communities to honor their heroes.
But the primary project they hope to build would be a 318-foot tall, $300 million national memorial to honor American veterans and first responders.
Called the
Lincoln Tower of Freedom, a project planned by Lang for years, it would include a bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln, an American Flag museum, a 3,000-square-foot auditorium, a conference meeting room and tech center and classrooms. The building would feature a bell tower with a 76,000-pound bourdon bronze bell, 50 carillon bells and 13 change bells.
“Dedicated to all responders and defenders who have a passion to care for and defend the people of our great nation,” reads promotional materials on the project.
At 318 feet tall the Lincoln Tower of Freedom would be taller that the 21-floor Potawatomi Casino Hotel in Milwaukee, and taller than the 305-foot-tall Statue of Liberty in New York.
Lang envisions the Lincoln Tower of Freedom as the anchor of a 500-acre mixed-use development. The location is to be determined, and would depend on the wishes of the donor or donors to the project, but Lang and Church hope to build it in Wisconsin, perhaps west of Delafield along I-94.
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Bob Lang and Jason Church[/caption]
It’s an extremely ambitious project. Lang and Church don’t have the funds to build it. But they have a bold vision, extensive networks and steadfast belief that they can raise funds from patriotic, wealthy individuals who will be eager to support the project. They plan to finance the project entirely with private funding.
“I’m not a wealthy person in terms of having millions of dollars but from the people that I’ve talked to certainly in politics who have been able to make fortunes in this country and the ones that have talked to me always express it, an extreme sense of gratitude,” Church said. “The reason that I think this will pick up so much steam is that they know they couldn’t do this in another country. They know they couldn’t provide for their families or build what they had anywhere else but this place and that is only done through the blood and sacrifice of those who are defending it. There is no other way, there really isn’t.”
Lang, 80, founded The Lang Companies in 1982. It sold calendars, greeting cards, stationary, decorative boxes and collectibles. He grew it into a business with annual revenue of more than $60 million. Lang sold The Lang Cos. in 2003. During his career he also built 19 Williamsburg-style buildings that revitalized downtown Delafield, and co-founded Delafield State Bank, which was later rebranded Town Bank and then acquired by Wintrust Financial Corp.
Lang built Erin Hills on an undulating landscape in the Town of Erin in Washington County. The golf course opened in 2006. Lang became determined to attract the U.S. Open to Erin Hills, and spent so much on improvements that he ran out of money and sold the course in 2009. Erin Hills was awarded the 2017 U.S. Open in 2010.
Now Lang is
working to develop another high-end golf course in western Waukesha County and has been working to attract investors in the project.
Church served in the U.S. Army from 2011-14, and is a retired captain. In 2012, while serving in Afghanistan, he was injured by an improvised explosive device (IED), which resulted in the loss of significant portions of his legs, and cut short what he had planned to be a long military career.
After treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center near Washington D.C. and returning to civilian life, Church earned a master’s degree from Georgetown University and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School.
He served as a law clerk in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Madison, as a regional director and as an attorney for U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, a field representative for the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs and as chairman of U.S. military advocacy organization Veterans on Duty.
In 2020 Church, a Menomonie High School graduate, ran for Congress in the Republican primary for Wisconsin’s 7
th Congressional District, but was defeated by Tom Tiffany.
Lang started developing the business, called Robert Lang Memorials, in 2021. While developing the plans for the Lincoln Tower of Freedom, Lang has consulted with several individuals who he hopes will be part of the project’s construction including
Tom Boldt, chairman of Appleton-based construction firm
The Boldt Group;
Stan Christoph, president of South Carolina-based
Bell Foundry Christoph; international foundry casting expert
Paul Cavanagh, of Rhode Island; and
Jeff Buccacio, owner and lead designer of Canton, Massachusetts-based
Buccacio Sculpture Services LLC.
“I think it’s an amazing project,” Buccacio said. “At a time when our country needs unity, it couldn’t be a better time (for the project). Every time I talk to Bob, I get enthused, I get excited. He’s a true visionary. It’s a very ambitious project, but it’s a worthy project.”
Lang and Church met when Lang sold a site next to his home in the Village of Summit to the
Gary Sinise Foundation, which
built a specially adapted smart home there for Church. The Gary Sinise Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports veterans, first responders and their families. It was founded in 2011 by Sinise, a Hollywood actor whose film credits include roles as Lieutenant Dan Taylor in the movie “Forrest Gump” and astronaut Ken Mattingly in the film “Apollo 13.”
One of Lang’s biggest motivations for pursuing the Lincoln Tower of Freedom project is to honor the memory of the 13 U.S. service members who were killed in 2021 in an attack at the Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. On Aug. 26, 2021, during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, a suicide bombing killed 182 people, including 169 Afghan civilians and 13 members of the U.S. military. A regional branch of ISIS (Islamic State) claimed responsibility for the attack. Of the 13 U.S. service members who were killed, 11 were marines, one was with the Army and one with the Navy.
“They’re not forgotten, but they’re not getting the recognition they should,” Lang said.
Church said the fall of Afghanistan as U.S. forces withdrew has been difficult to take for himself and other veterans of the Global War on Terrorism.
“That was a very traumatic event for a substantial amount of Global War on Terror veterans,” he said. “The imagery is incredibly powerful.”
That’s one of the reasons Church and Lang want to honor American veterans, and also why they think others will support their vision.
“The veteran community as a whole is trying to grasp what’s happened over the last 20 years with an all-volunteer force,” Church said. “And I think that there are plenty of people that want to give to something like this…To me what motivates me is friends that I know that I’ve lost, personally.”
Lang and Church say they are undaunted by the challenge of raising $300 million for the Lincoln Tower of Freedom project.
“When I ran for Congress I raised $1 million in five months,” Church said. “I know that there are ways of doing this. As I’ve gotten to know Bob there’s one thing that I respect immensely, he gets things done. He does. He gets it done. I think there will be enough attention and desire to get something like this built. I think now that the country in many ways is moving in a different direction, there’s going to become this appetite to memorialize and to dedicate to those that have served. I wouldn’t be sitting here with Bob if I didn’t think it was possible.”
Buccacio said he “absolutely” thinks the Lincoln Tower of Freedom project is feasible.
“I would not pick the phone up if I did not think this was a possibility or if I thought it wasn’t needed,” he said. “I don’t think it s a matter of it being an impossibility, I think it’s a matter of a necessity. We need things like this. Be it sculpture, be it film, be it the written word, whatever it is, we’ve got to all be pushing in the direction of unity. It’s very ambitious, but I think it could really do a lot of good. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?”
Lang and Church also say they want to honor first responders at the Lincoln Tower of Freedom and at other smaller memorials that they would build for local communities.
“The other mission that we’re doing with the business is memorializing first responders, having it be something that could be in the center of a village or town or city,” Church said. “When I think of the people who run into those, God forbid like a school shooting, the people who go into those places, you know there needs to be something memorialized about the individuals who do that. Where I fought was in a land I may never see again. I can only imagine what it’s like to have to relive maybe the worst day of your life over and over and over because you have to drive by where it happened every single day. I think a community needs to recognize those individuals in a way that honors them.
“I think that having something that is permanent that leaves that mark that isn’t just lost in time that isn’t just lost in a generation but is there so long as this nation can persist is probably the best thing that we can do as a community to honor people in perpetuity who do these things. That is what motivates me.”
Church believes Lang’s experience as a developer combined with their shared passion, Lang’s vision for the project, their networks and the desire of wealthy and patriotic Americans who want to honor veterans and first responders will enable them to make the Lincoln Tower of Freedom project a reality.
“Bob’s expertise on just building things is something I don’t have,” Church said. “But what I do have is a drive and determination to serve the country and when you put the two of us together in a room with somebody who can put this together in terms of financing, we’ll get it done. It will get done one way or another.”
“I think it will happen, quite honestly. I really do," Buccacio said. "I think when the right people hear about it, and the need for it and the way Bob has a gift for explaining it. I just think that you’re going to find a lot of people are going to jump on board with it.”
