Scooby Doo was the hardest one to do.

You wouldn’t think that a cartoon character could take this much out of an artist, but for Troy Kelley, this one certainly did.

Shortly after the killing of 13 people and wounding of 32 others at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009, Kelley began work on his idea to memorialize the lives and sacrifices of the dead and injured.

The 5 November 2009 Memorial is the brainchild of Kelley, who began work on it just weeks after the tragic shooting.

During the time in which he has been working on this project, Kelley has been in direct contact with family members of every family.

From those meetings and conversations, he has sculpted 13 bronzes that are part of the 5 November 2009 Fort Hood Memorial.

The hardest for him, though, was Scooby Doo.

He said that he watched every day of the trial of Major Nidal Malik Hasan on closed circuit TV.

There were three witnesses to the killing of 21-year-old Francheska Velez, Kelley said of the trial. One of those witnesses told the court of Velez’ last words. “They were, ‘My baby, my baby.’ She was two months pregnant.”

After speaking with Velez’ father, he said he wanted to honor the unborn victim as well. He says that Scooby Doo was Francheska’s favorite stuffed toy from childhood. Kelley’s sculpture for Velez has a Scooby Doo holding a smaller Scooby with the dogtags engraved with the letters B.S.D. for Baby Scooby Doo.

Six years after the fact, Kelley still chokes back the emotion when telling the story.

Each of the victims of the shooting will have their stories told through the 5 November 2009 memorial.

“I asked each one for a favorite item, momento, or object,” Kelley said. He sculpted bronzes of those objects to sit atop the granite pedestals.

The three-sided pedestals include a photograph of the victim and a poem, song or prayer chosen by the family of the victim.Each individual memorial will include a niche for visitors to leave mementos, notes, flowers and thoughts.

“There will also be a QR code that can be scanned so that the viewer can read an entire biography of the person, not just what happened that day,” Kelley explained.

The 13 pedestals will form an endless ring, Kelley said. Kelley purposefully chose a ring to house the individual monuments.

“A ring has always represented eternity and something without beginning or end,” Kelley said. “It is also a symbol of unity.”

A sense of unity, of belonging and of one-ness is something Kelley wants visitors to the memorial to take away.

Kelley, who is known best for his Sirena statue,  sees art as a way of telling stories through the use of symbols.

He told stories that were hard to listen to with an exhibit called The Human Experience for the Institute for Humanities at Salado. Sculptures in this series addressed homelessness, abortion, civil rights and other topics that define us. He used art to tell the story of one man standing up to an army, evoking memories of Tiananmen Square. Another sculpture showed a featureless homeless man sleeping on a grate with the colors of the American flag flowing into the drain. Another showed Uncle Sam riding a bicycle downhill uncontrollably.

Kelley said that he had to reach inside himself when working on the sculptures of the 5 November 2009 Memorial in order to bring “something positive from something so tragic.”

Kelley worked as hard at funding the $400,000+ Memorial as he did creating it. He would visit civic, school or church groups anywhere and at anytime to talk about the Memorial.

Among the groups locally that donated to the project at the Salado Lions Club, Salado United Methodist Church – Monday Club, Salado Chamber of Commerce Ladies Auxiliary, American business Women’s Association Chisholm Trail chapter, Salado Area Republican Womens and Brookshire Brothers.

“We accepted any kind of contribution, cash, check or in-kind,” Kelley said, adding that some businesses donation matierals, others labor and some both materials and labor.

The 5 November 2009 Memorial will be dedicated at 3 p.m. March 11 at the Killeen Civic and Convention Center on W.S. Young. Gov. Greg Abbott, Senator John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. John Carter will be among the elected officials in attendance.

Kelley invites Saladoans to join him and his wife Vickie for the dedication of the memorial. If you cannot attend, you can watch a live broadcast of the event on KCEN-TV.