This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is our American stories and up next a story you likely won't forget.

Across the state of Iowa, people can find the Freedom Rocks.

These rocks painted by Ray Bubba Sorensen

depict local military heroes and scenes of battle

as a thank you to American veterans.

Here's our own Monty Montgomery with the story.

Ray Bubba Sorensen was born in the heartland of America. So I was born in Crest in Iowa,

and I grew up in the little town of Fontnell, Iowa, about 600 people, you know, played

about every sport, and I just had kind of your normal, generic

high school or small town upbringing before technology really hit, I guess.

So my Uncle Ted served in Vietnam as an AV-C- Navy CB and you know most most of the country knows that,

you know, our Vietnam veterans weren't treated very well when they returned back from service

and they came home to a very ungrateful nation and, you know, some were spat on, some were, you know,

protested as they got off buses and planes and

a lot of those guys kind of hid their service or or were ashamed of their service and my mom told me

about all that and you know that never sat well with me and then of course like as I was growing up

movies like Rambo TV shows like Tour of Duty, old shows, World War II dramas like combat.

My mom would watch those with me and although, you know, they were fictional, they were based on actual narratives of Vietnam veterans, World War II veterans.

So my mom was able to kind of illustrate to me the service and sacrifice of all these men

and women, how much, especially our Korean War, which was a forgotten war and our Vietnam

veterans were treated when they came back.

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