Our Fallen Heroes

Tom Barter

Our Fallen Heroes is a 15′ x 15′, 225-square-foot tile mosaic mural that enlivens a previously blank wall facing Houghton Park. “Jordan High Remembers Our Fallen Heroes,” reads the colorful mural made up of more than 1,000 hand-painted tiles. Students at Jordan High designed the mural and worked with Tom Barter to paint and cut the tiles. Our Fallen Heroes features a triad of images conceived by students as defining moments in the nation’s and the school’s history. These include a reproduction of the bronze statues at the apex of the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial in Washington, D.C., the B-17 Flying Fortress named “Jordan High School,” which was purchased with war bonds sold by Jordan High School students in 1942, and firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero in September 2001. The artwork was designed to complement then-adjacent Long Beach Vietnam Memorial in Houghton Park and lists the names of the 74 students who graduated from Jordan High and fought and died in every major conflict, from World War II to the present.