“In combat, you have no future. You have no past. You have only the present. To survive, you must consider yourself already dead, and then fight with all that is in you to stay alive, and to keep alive those who are fighting alongside you.” – Idaho Supreme Court Justice Daniel Eismann

Ron Rankin remembers his battle for survival clearly, although it took place 54 years ago, half a world away.

In the breast pocket of his dungarees, he carried a small Red Cross Bible and photos of his young wife and 7-month-old daughter, encased in “bulletproof” steel. The temperature was 30 below zero. All around him, U.S. Marines, Army soldiers and refugees from North Korea were dying on a frozen mountain road, 78 miles from the coast and safety. The mountains of the Chosin Reservoir were teeming with 100,000 Chinese hell-bent on slaughtering the 15,000 Marines and support personnel caught in their trap.

Now 75, the former Kootenai County commissioner remembers the Chinese bugling in the mountains as part of psychological warfare designed to make their superior numbers seem even greater. He remembers Marines from a rifle squad stopping to help a refugee birthing a baby at the side of the narrow road. He remembers the 100,000 refugees who voted with their feet for freedom by accompanying the heroic evacuation.

Above all, he recalls those who were wounded and fell defending his country.

For much of his four decades in Kootenai County, Rankin has been an anti-tax bulldog who fought the property tax with his time, energy and money. He asked no quarter from the company of political enemies he made along the way. And he gave no quarter. He won some major battles, like passage of the One Percent Initiative in 1978, and he lost some. In the end, he capped his public life by winning two terms on the Board of County Commissioners. But that’s not how he’ll be remembered.

Fifty years from now, long after the old Marine has returned to dust, he’ll be remembered as the man who remembered his brothers in arms.

Beginning with his first term in office and continuing through today, he has been building a memorial to Kootenai County veterans – all with private money. At the front entrance to the new courthouse annex, the $68,000 memorial features 13 murals of important American battles laser-etched in color on polished granite slabs, three flags, park benches and landscaping. The piece de resistance is a 7-foot, 8,000-pound granite slab that bears the names of the 141 Kootenai County residents who have died in battle, dating back to the Spanish-American war. Dozens died in World War II, from A (Everett Abbs) to Z (William Zakora). Another eight in Korea. And 16 more in Vietnam.

“I wanted people who were doing business with Kootenai County to pass by this plaza and see the ones who paid the price in blood for them to do so,” Rankin said.

The names on the stone reveal that our wars have ravaged prominent Kootenai County families: Damiano. Watson. Nipp. Wolters. Sheriff Rocky Watson and his wife, Mary, sponsored a Vietnam War scene in the memory of the sheriff’s older brother, Russel, a decorated “tunnel rat” who was killed with nine others while setting “booby traps” on his son, Lee’s, first birthday. A month before, Army Staff Sgt. Watson was wounded defending the perimeter of his camp. As a result, his name also appears in Rankin’s Hall of Heroes and on the Purple Heart Honor Roll in the foyer of the courthouse, adjacent to the veterans plaza.

This, too, is holy ground.

A movie could be made from the brief descriptions that accompanied the 51 medal duplicates, enshrined in gold and glass. And one has. In May 1944, Army Sgt. Paul Ziegele charged a pillbox and killed three of four soldiers in New Guinea. Brothers George and Charles Nadler, both high-ranking officers, received dozens of medals between them for meritorious service in Vietnam. On May 5, 1945, former Mayor Ray Stone helped liberate the Nazis’ Loebbelin death camp. Coeur d’Alene native Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, commanding officer of the famous Black Sheep Squadron 214, shot down 26 enemy planes as a fighter pilot – and later became the focus of both an autobiography, “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” a made-for-TV movie starring Robert Conrad, and a television series.

Thanks to Rankin, they’ll all be remembered. Rankin will be, too. For all the years he spent fighting property taxes and political opponents, on both sides of the aisle, Rankin will be remembered for his service to country and devotion to Kootenai County’s veterans. The courthouse memorial is a magnum opus that, unfortunately, won’t be completed until the nations finally beat their swords into plowshares.