SALT LAKE CITY — A first-of-its-kind monument that could become one of the largest bronze sculptures in the western United States is under construction in Utah.

Surrounded by sculptures lining his home, sculptor Sabin Howard refines his model for what will become the Grand Liberty Arch, a 60-foot-long, 36-foot-tall bronze monument depicting American history.

“It’s based upon geometric solids and how they move in and out of space,” Howard said.

The Grand Liberty Arch tells the story of America through a series of bronze reliefs.

“It is an arch to honor what we can be and is built to celebrate our nation’s 250th year with pride for the original American virtues and ideals,” Howard wrote in the monument’s proposal.

The front of the monument depicts the birth of America, including the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence. Visitors walking through the arch will see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution displayed on the interior walls alongside an eternal flame.

The opposite side portrays westward expansion and the 20th century, from World War I through space exploration. The two ends depict emancipation and the Civil War.

Each figurine is deeply symbolic. One recurring figure throughout the monument is Lady Liberty.

“Because that liberty is here. It’s a symbol,” Howard said.

Another figure carries a shield, representing the protection of freedom.

The monument features 56 sculpted figures, some standing up to 12 feet tall.

One of those figures, carrying an American flag, is modeled after a Texas veteran. Howard said the veteran served in two wars and, shortly before returning from Afghanistan, stepped on an explosive device that resulted in the loss of his leg.

“He has a tremendous amount of strength and courage,” Howard said. “He’s still going forward, so we’ve been wounded, we’ve been injured, yet we still have the courage to proceed forward.”

Many of the models Howard found in the Beehive State were at local CrossFit. Howard wanted bodybuilders and athletes for his artistic style, something he described as putting a movie on a monument.

“It’s a superhero’s version of American history,” Howard said.

The $55 million monument has been approved by the Capitol Preservation Board and Gov. Spencer Cox for a site above the Capitol. A circular plaza will surround the arch, symbolizing unity and a beacon of guiding light.

Partnering with the American Preparatory Academy, Howard hopes it will design lessons and programs that allow students to recite founding texts and perform at the monument.

Howard will work alongside three or four sculptors, including two from the Beehive State. He has most of the project funded, but is still seeking donors.

“This will show the world what’s going on in Utah,” Howard said.

At 62, decades of dedication have led Howard to this moment.

“It took 42 years to get here,” Howard said.

Howard couldn’t even draw when he was 19 years old, yet he was determined to try.

“I decided one afternoon, I’m going to make art like Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael,” Howard said.

Becoming a sculptor for Howard is about more than mastering technique.

“You’re not only developing your skills, you’re also developing your ability to tell a story through visual narrative,” Howard said.

The story Howard is telling, he said, has never been presented on this scale before.

“What I’m basically doing is I’m manifesting a universe,” Howard said.

A universe that was inspired by his previous creations, and most recently, a monument for the nation.

After more than 75,000 hours of sculpting and after roughly four decades, Howard was commissioned to create the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C., featuring 38 figures.

The WWI model took six months to complete. Although the Grand Liberty Arch will be a larger monument, Howard said the current model took only three weeks, not because it’s less complicated, quite the opposite.

Howard attributes his successes to his belief in God.

“I operate with the assumption that someone has my back and Christ and God and light and truth are what drives things forward,” Howard said. “You cannot accomplish things of such magnitude if you do not have faith in something larger than yourself.”

That faith ultimately brought Howard to Utah.

“I was told, ‘Go make a monument for your country. Go make a monument to represent who we are and what our history is,’” Howard said. “There is no human commissioner here. It’s my maker.”

Howard was encouraged by Sen. Mike Lee to make Utah home to his monument, and Howard agreed that the faith-based communities would appreciate the monument more than any other location.

“I don’t think there’s another place in the country that could manage a sculpture of this magnitude or meaning except Utah,” Howard said. “Nothing like this has ever happened.”

The monument’s magnitude in size alone makes the project significant, and Howard called it akin to the Sistine Chapel with how many figurines and symbols will be portrayed.

“When they go look at a monument like that, they’re hit in the gut in a very visceral, alchemical way,” Howard said.

Howard’s six-foot model of the Grand Liberty Arch will be displayed during Independence Day weekend in the Capitol Rotunda.

He will begin sculpting the full-sized monument in July, hoping to install a new panel every 15 months. Howard plans to complete the monument in time for Utah to host the 2034 Winter Olympics.

by Marcos Cruz, CT Mirror
June 29, 2026

Every week in Bridgeport, I sit with immigrant families as they divide their limited weekly earnings in two different directions. Part will pay the rent here in Connecticut. The remaining amount will be transferred back to a family member overseas.

I started a bilingual financial literacy program for these families, but many of the questions they ask me are not related to my services. Instead, they want to know how to safely transfer money to relatives living in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, or Mexico. Economists call this kind of transfer a remittance. Together, millions of these transfers create a massive flow of capital out of wealthy nations and into lower and middle-income countries.

According to the World Bank, migrant workers transferred over $685 billion into low and middle income countries in 2024, a total that surpassed both foreign direct investment and international development assistance. The Inter-American Development Bank reports that Latin America and the Caribbean received approximately $161 billion in remittances during 2024, and the World Bank puts Mexico’s share at about $68 billion , making it the second largest recipient in the world.

Numbers this large become foreign policy issues. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute found that in 2023, remittances to developing countries reached approximately $656 billion, three to four times greater than global foreign assistance, which totaled roughly $224 billion. Unlike foreign assistance, which can take months or years to arrive, remittances are paid directly to recipients and spent immediately on basic necessities such as food and medicine. They represent one of the most efficient poverty reduction programs yet developed, and no government designed it.

It should disturb anyone concerned with U.S. foreign policy that Congress has chosen to tax the money sent abroad through remittances.

As part of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025 , a new 1 percent excise tax was added on money sent abroad, beginning January 1, 2026. Earlier versions of the bill proposed a 5 percent tax and then a 3.5 percent tax before lawmakers settled on 1 percent. They also extended its scope to cover both citizens and immigrants. Based on data from the Center for Global Development, an estimated 48 million foreign-born individuals could be affected.

Although a 1 percent tax appears minor when expressed as a decimal, its implications are strategic. The same analysis projected that Mexico could lose over $1.5 billion per year, and that El Salvador, a country whose stability Washington treats as an important relationship, could lose the equivalent of roughly 0.6 percent of its national income. These are precisely the economies whose instability contributes to the migration that Washington says it wishes to reduce. By taxing remittances and lowering incomes in these countries, Washington will have worsened the root cause of the immigration problem while claiming to address it.

The tax also fails on its own merits. The law excludes bank transfers and payments made with U.S. issued debit and credit cards, so it falls hardest on cash transactions, the method used by people who do not have or cannot obtain bank accounts. As predicted, taxing the most transparent means of sending money pushes families toward less transparent channels, the reverse of what the tax intends. It also stacks on top of the roughly 6 percent that migrants already pay in transfer fees, about twice the 3 percent rate the United Nations set as a global development goal.

I was drawn to this issue by faith as much as economics. Catholic social teaching upholds the dignity of work and the central importance of the family, and a remittance is exactly that: money earned through one’s labor and sent across a distance out of love. To tax it is to treat an act of devotion as a loophole to be closed.

There is a superior alternative to the policy our federal government is advancing on immigration. Lower the cost of transferring money internationally. Rather than punishing the people locked out of the banking system with higher costs, give them greater access to it. And treat remittances as what they are, a development tool more effective than nearly all of the direct funding we engage in. A nation confident in its own economic strength does not need to take a cut from the money a domestic worker sends home to her mother.

I will continue to spend my days with these families in Bridgeport, helping them find ways to safely send as much of their earnings as they can. But the next time I hear someone claim that Washington is trying to address immigration at its source, I will remember the new line on that $60 transfer, and I will wonder whether anyone in the room understood what they were taxing.

Marcos Cruz lives in Fairfield.

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Most 18-year-olds focus on deciding what they want to do after high school.

Alyssa Shade already knows.

The Yoder teen already is a certified EMT, a red-carded wildland firefighter and a member of the all-volunteer Yoder Fire Department.

Another 18-year-old, J.R. Ruiz, joined the department only a few months ago. He recently returned from a wildfire-severity assignment in Colorado and, this past week, was helping on the South Fork Fire near Cody.

Behind them is another generation waiting in the wings. Fire Chief Justin Burkart’s 17-year-old son, Jayden, is already part of the department, while his 16-year-old daughter, Maykayla, recently joined as a junior firefighter.

In a profession where volunteer departments nationwide are struggling to recruit younger members, Yoder appears to be on a different track.

How does a town of just 134 people keep producing firefighters sought out and trusted to fight some of the nation’s biggest wildfires?

The answer starts with volunteers investing in one another.

“We’re 100% volunteer,” Burkart told Cowboy State Daily.

Beyond Wyoming

The tiny Goshen County community sits along U.S. Highway 85 south of Torrington, surrounded by hay fields and open prairie.

The Yoder Volunteer Fire Department protects roughly 248 square miles and serves about 700 residents throughout its fire district.

Yet those volunteers routinely deploy across the West, cutting fire lines with bulldozers, staffing engines on major incidents and supporting wildfire operations from Colorado to Virginia.

“We have a reputation of really sending out some professional firefighters to these incidents,” Burkart said. “It’s not a game to us. It’s something that we really take some pride in.”

Burkart joined the department as an 18-year-old in 1999 after discovering federal wildfire assignments could help pay for college.

“I found out it was a good way for me to pay for college,” he said.

Today, the department routinely sends engines, a water tender and two dozers on federal assignments, with about 22 members participating regularly in the federal fire program.

Last year, Yoder firefighters collectively spent about three months helping battle wildfires in California. Burkart said the department paid roughly $1 million to firefighters and seasonal personnel through federal assignments in 2025.

For a department staffed entirely by volunteers, those assignments have become far more than an opportunity to earn extra income.

“They’ll have more contact with live fire over a two-week period than most volunteers would have in a three- or four-year period,” Burkart said.

The knowledge comes home.

Heather Trompke, who serves on a Rocky Mountain incident management team, works in the finance section tracking personnel and equipment time during major incidents.

“We get to bring all of this stuff back,” Trompke said. “We can train and show how to fill out documents properly, and that translates into a smoother fire for everyone else when they go out.”

“There’s always something to learn in wildland firefighting,” added firefighter Bailey Powell. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve been doing it for 60 years or five.”

Growing Firefighters

Like volunteer departments across America, Yoder faces a challenge that has nothing to do with flames.

Recruiting.

“If you look nationwide, the volunteer fire service is aging out,” Burkart said. “The younger generation is not really involved in that.”

Instead of waiting for volunteers to walk through the station doors, Yoder and neighboring Goshen County departments are trying to grow their own.

Robert Shade helps coordinate a countywide junior firefighter program that introduces teenagers to the fire service before they turn 18.

“Right now, nationally, pretty much every trade, every job there is, there’s a lack of young people getting involved,” Shade said.

Junior firefighters learn equipment familiarization, truck maintenance, hose deployment, pump operations and safety procedures before becoming full firefighters.

“They’re the future,” Shade said. “We’ve got to make sure that we get them involved.”

Rather than keeping the program confined to Yoder, departments across Goshen County work together so young firefighters train alongside one another.

“We’re reaching out and kind of working with the whole county,” Shade said. “It helps everyone get to know each other.”

The program appears to be paying off.

Shade started attending meetings as a teenager after encouragement from her boyfriend, who happens to be Burkart’s son.

“I kind of started coming for fun,” she said. “Then I got a true understanding of everything, and it just became really interesting.”

A Family Tradition

Volunteer firefighting isn’t just passed from one generation to the next in Yoder.

It’s often passed around the dinner table.

Burkart’s wife left this week for a federal wildfire assignment in Colorado. Robert Shade serves alongside daughter Alyssa.

“There are families on the department,” Shade said. “Husbands and wives, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters.”

For him, volunteering alongside Alyssa is one of the most rewarding parts of the job.

“It’s a lot of fun to go out with Alyssa and do what we both love,” he said.

The work isn’t without sacrifice.

“When the pager goes off, you could be at a dinner with your family,” Burkart said. “You could be at your kid’s birthday party. You could be at a track event for your kids.”

And the sacrifice isn’t limited to firefighters.

“It’s not only the members that have to make that sacrifice,” he said. “It’s also the family.”

When firefighters deploy on federal assignments, the department still has to answer calls at home.

“We do have a lot of members that deploy nationally, but we also have to protect home when they’re gone,” Burkart said.

That responsibility is shared with neighboring departments through mutual-aid agreements.

Last year alone, Yoder firefighters assisted neighboring agencies 26 times, while local farmers and ranchers helped firefighters cut fire lines during large grass fires.

Yoder’s firefighters have built something much larger than a volunteer department.

They’ve built a pipeline to answer the call.

One generation trains the next.

Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.