Yuma ceremony honors Vietnam veteran Kent Hansen, wounded service members

A bell rang after each name as families, veterans and friends stood in the shadow of Downtown Yuma’s military memorial space and remembered Lance Cpl. Kent Hansen, a local Vietnam veteran whose absence still shaped the room.

The Saturday morning ceremony at Armed Forces Park began at 9 a.m. on April 25, 2026, with the unveiling of a bloodstone honoring Hansen and recognizing the men and women wounded in all of America’s wars. The tribute made Hansen’s remembrance larger than a single life story. It tied one Yuma Marine’s service to the shared sacrifice carried by generations of veterans.

Greg Long, one of the veterans who attended, said Hansen left a hole in his life. That grief was echoed by family members and friends who spoke warmly about Hansen and the pain his death left behind, giving the ceremony the feel of both a memorial and a reunion among people bound by military service.

The names of those killed in Vietnam and other wars were read aloud one by one, with the bell marking each name and turning the event into a public act of remembrance. Later in the day, Hansen’s platoon was scheduled to gather for dinner, extending the tribute beyond the morning program and into the kind of fellowship that often defines military communities long after the uniform comes off.

The setting mattered as much as the program. Armed Forces Park sits at 291 Gila Street on the site of the old Yuma railroad depot, and the city describes it as the only park of its kind in Arizona. More than 2,000 black granite plaques now line the park’s walls, each engraved with a veteran’s name, rank, dates of service and service emblem. Branch-specific granite tables and POW/MIA tables add to the park’s role as a permanent civic altar for Yuma-area service members.

The city took over the park’s military plaque program on July 1, 2023, continuing a tradition that began when the first plaque was mounted on Oct. 10, 2002. Marine Corps Air Station Yuma said the park’s original plaque program was designed with a goal of 2,000 plaques, a number the site has long worked toward as a living record of local military history.

Saturday’s tribute also fit into a broader wave of Vietnam remembrance in Yuma County, including a January 2025 commemoration at the Arizona State Veterans Home and the Yuma County Historical Society’s “Yumans in Vietnam” exhibit, which opened on Veterans Day 2025. In a city shaped by defense ties, Hansen’s memorial spoke to something larger than nostalgia: it affirmed that Yuma still measures service, loss and loyalty in public, shared spaces.