Like it will for all of us someday, the bell is tolling for Tony DuMosch.
Six months ago, the U.S. Navy veteran was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and, after his one treatment option failed, he was given a dire prognosis — one year left to live and at least half of it bedridden and in pain.
Now past the halfway mark, DuMosch’s body is growing weaker by the day, but his determination to serve his fellow veterans has not. After two decades of documenting, preserving and celebrating Loveland’s military service, the former sailor still has an important project on his to-do list.
“The Loveland Veterans Memorial has the most meaning and heart to me,” DuMosch said. “It represents every veteran of all war eras. And it will be just the second sculpture in this city — the city that calls itself the sculpture capital of the world — that signifies anything that relates to the military.”
The idea for a Loveland Veterans Memorial, also known as the Honor Monument, originated a few years ago with a group of Loveland High School alumni who wanted to erect a monument to their classmates who served in the Vietnam War. With DuMosch’s guidance, the project plans expanded into a 2-acre park on Boyd Lake Road that will recognize veterans of all U.S. conflicts large and small.
Now in the planning and fundraising stages, the projectap founders expect to break ground on the site in early summer 2025 and wrap up a few months later — a timeline that comes too late for DuMosch.
“This is the one and only project I’ve started that I won’t see finished,” he said, his voice tinged with emotion. “I believe in miracles, but there’s not much chance.”
‘I need to meet people’
DuMosch was born in Amsterdam in 1959 to parents who immigrated to the Netherlands from Indonesia during World War II. Two years later, they immigrated again to California, where DuMosch spent his childhood, though never too long in one place.
“Dad was always looking for a better job,” DuMosch said. “So there wasn’t one single place I lived for more than three years as a child.”
At age 17, DuMosch joined the Navy as a mechanic and started traveling the world a year later. His first duty station was at Holy Loch, Scotland aboard the U.S.S.Holland, giving the young sailor a chance to travel through much of Europe.
His next port took him back home to Alameda, Calif., where he served aboard the U.S.S. Roanoke and got a chance to see the other half of the world. After that, he spent time in the Atlantic ocean on the destroyer escort U.S.S. Miller, which he remembers as the “best” ship he served on.
“I got to do and see things that I’d never ever thought I would,” DuMosch recalled.
Ironically, the Navy also introduced DuMosch to Colorado, where he would eventually settle after a lifetime of traveling. Assigned to a recruiting office in Golden, he initially struggled to convince potential recruits to sign up over the phone, but eventually convinced his superiors to let him use a more active approach.
“My first three months, I rolled what they called ‘donut,’ which is a zero, got nobody in,” DuMosch said. “So they sent me to Denver to see the chief recruiter and I told him ‘get me off the phones, I need to meet people.’ … Within a month I had seven new applicants.”
DuMosch was later honored by the Navy as one of the top recruiters in the nation, and took the lessons he learned in Golden to heart over the years as he worked to revive the legacy of Loveland’s veterans.
“You’ve got to bring out your human side,” he said. “If you don’t believe in your product as a Navy recruiter, you’ll never get anybody. And if you don’t believe in being in the American Legion or having a veterans monument in town, then you’ll never get members or a single dollar.”
‘He just doesn’t give up’
DuMosch spent the last five years of his naval career in Hawaii as a water safety instructor, before eagerly returning to Colorado in 2000 and settling in Loveland. During his two decades as a sailor, he earned numerous medals, but none more meaningful than his award for volunteer service.
“Even when I was in the Navy, I always volunteered in my community,” DuMosch said.
Though he never saw combat during his career, DuMosch said that he has the utmost respect for those who did and is dedicated to honoring their sacrifice and service.
Armed with that passion, it didn’t take long after DuMosch’s arrival in Loveland for his volunteer spirit to emerge, but it almost sputtered out after his first few visits to the local veterans club on Cleveland Avenue.
“It definitely fit the stereotype of an old man’s veterans group,” DuMosch said. “I was 40 and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get involved due to the lack of welcoming.”
But rather than give up and go elsewhere, DuMosch plowed ahead and soon started gathering support for several new veteran-related endeavors.
“I’ve always been a person of a glass half full, not half empty,” he said of his perseverance. “So I took it for what it was worth and I went to a couple meetings and started spreading my smile and my attitude.”
The list of veterans events, projects and initiatives that DuMosch has been a part of since then is lengthy. As his first order of business, he worked to bring the traveling Vietnam memorial wall to Loveland, finally succeeding in 2002.
Over the years, he has also worked with the city and nonprofit groups to install memorials and commemorative hearts in Loveland, place bricks in Dwayne Webster Veterans Park and preserve local military artifacts in the Loveland Museum. DuMosch also spearheaded an effort to renovate a house for a local disabled veteran and has organized the annual Pearl Harbor Remembrance ceremony for nearly two decades.
“Tony was such a driving force on so many of these, these, these honorings throughout the community that most people drive by and don’t even think of or notice,” said Loveland Parks and Recreation’s Dan Willadsen, who has worked with DuMosch for more than a decade. “Behind the scenes, he has just been working tirelessly.”
Among DuMosch’s crowning achievements is the elevation of Veterans Day in Loveland from a small, local celebration into a nationally recognized regional observance with a parade that attracts thousands of visitors to the city.
“Itap just amazing as far as his knowledge of military history and our city goes,” said fellow Navy veteran Bart Bartholomew. “He just doesn’t give up. Every time there’s an opportunity to honor veterans, he does it.”
The final mission
DuMosch has Willadsen to thank for introducing him to the Loveland Veterans Honor Monument project. When the Vietnam veterans came to the city with the idea, Willadsen gave them DuMosch’s phone number and told them to talk to him first.
“They didn’t even know we have a Vietnam memorial at the cemetery,” Willadsen said. “They thought they were going to be the first. So thatap when I brought Tony in.”
For his part, DuMosch was only too happy to help, even if the group needed a lot of education at the beginning. His first move was to take them on a tour of Loveland’s existing monuments and memorials to show them what they were up against.
“Here you have these guys that want to do a great thing, but they don’t know their own backyard,” DuMosch said. “They’re looking out the front and not paying attention to the back.”
Under DuMosch’s patient guidance, the scope of the project widened from a single memorial for one war to a remembrance park for all U.S. combat veterans. DuMosch has also helped the group choose a site and eased them into the work of recruiting volunteers and finding donors.
“He’s just there to help, to oversee, but he goes much deeper than that,” said Ron Albers, one of the project founders. “Itap just been a good fit. He’s been able to open our eyes to the way things work and the appropriate way to approach them.”
Albers said that knowing DuMosch won’t be around to see the completed memorial has been hard on other members of the project committee.
“Tony doesn’t leave things unfinished and we are working our ever-loving butts off to finish it for him,” Albers continued. “I don’t know that we’ll make it, but we’re doing everything in our power to get there.”
DuMosch has continued to consult with the group and attend planning meetings even as his health has waned over the last several months. Though he doesn’t know how much longer he can continue, DuMosch said that itap not in his nature to abandon anything.
“Itap who I am — never give up, never surrender, that kind of attitude,” DuMosch said. “I don’t give up on any projects unless I’m forced to, whether itap here in my own home at work, or for the community. I’m just wired that way.”
For Albers, Bartholomew and Willadsen, that unique wiring has made DuMosch not just an irreplaceable member of Loveland’s veterans community, but a cherished friend who will be deeply missed.
“He’s got a heart as big as the city of Loveland,” Bartholomew said. “Itap going to be terrible, but he is going out very strong.”
For more information about the Loveland Veterans Honor Monument, visit .
