Ray “Bubba” Sorensen on Honoring America’s Veterans Through the Freedom Rock

Ray "Bubba" Sorensen (0:01)

I was painting, a knelt-down painting, and a family had just come from burying their son in Illinois who was killed overseas. And they wanted to come somewhere where they could feel like his service was for nothing, and they came to my rock and talked to me. And so that hit me.

David From (0:14)

I mean, that's kind of sacred.

Ray "Bubba" Sorensen (0:16)

Oh, it made me think, like, if I don't do anything else in life, at least I've done something like that. And then I had a young man, he was younger, way younger than me even, he had to have just gotten out of service. And he said that he was contemplating suicide, and he came out to my rock, and he was like, there was nobody here, and he's like, I just sat and looked at your artwork, and after I sat and looked at your artwork, I got up, I just felt refreshed, and I felt that I was seeing.

And he's just like, I just wanted to tell you, I've got a new job, a certain new family, and I just wanted to say thank you when they left. And so, stories like that hit me hard and make it so like the days when it's tough, when I'm getting old, so kneeling down on the gravel and the pavement, and I'm like, what am I doing? You know, those stories come creeping back into my mind, like that's what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_3 (1:00)

Americans are capable of achieving extraordinary things when they have the freedom and opportunity to do so. This is American Potential.

David From (1:14)

Welcome to the American Potential Podcast. I'm your host, David From. Well, once again, we are celebrating, along with Americans for Prosperity, America's 250th anniversary, this time in Iowa, at the heart of our nation's celebration. Here in the Heartland, such a great, great time. And we are joined by an Iowa state representative who has honored veterans with a special talent that he has.

In the arts, actually. And so I'm so glad to welcome state representative, Ray Bubba Sorensen, to the program to talk about what you've been doing for decades now here in Iowa. Yeah.

Ray "Bubba" Sorensen (1:50)

So, you know, back in the day, 1999, I saw the movie Saving Private Ryan, and I was so inspired to say thank you to our veterans that that I went out and put my graffiti on a large graffiti rock. And it eventually became the Freedom Rock.

David From (2:06)

That's so cool. So.

Did you have a passion for like art and painting? Yeah, I clearly have a talent.

Ray "Bubba" Sorensen (2:14)

Yeah, I did. So I get into my senior year of high school, I had no idea what to major in, and I had great elementary, junior high and high school art teachers, and they pushed me. They were like, you should major in something art. And so I chose a wide major of art and design. And just there were no real mural painting classes, but there it was starting to broaden my horizons a little bit. And and I loved art and and I always wanted to try a mural. And so that was my very first mural. I went out and I called the quarry and asked permission. And that was weird that I called the guy and he was like, he's like, you're going to paint that in the middle of the day. I was like, I'm asking permission to paint it like, well, yeah, the guys are getting sick of painting over all the crap that's on it. And so I went out and painted my very favorite picture is the flag raising at Iwo Jima. And I painted that very crudely compared to what I can do now. And then I put, thank you, Veterans for our freedom.

That was the very first one.

David From (3:06)

And so where has it gone from there?

Ray "Bubba" Sorensen (3:08)

So from that, so like I said, it was a graffiti rock. So a few months went by, it got graffiti over. And I thought that was my foray into mural art.

It started coming around a Memorial Day again. And some of the local veterans go, hey, will you go paint that exact same thing out there again for Memorial Day? And I'm an artist. So I was like, no, I'll go paint it again, but I want to change it. And so I went all the way around the rock with I tried to, again, crudely draw Lee Teeters Reflections, which is a very famous painting of a Vietnam veteran leaning against the wall and the ghosts. So I tried, I attempted that and did that and did a bunch of other stuff all the way around. And that didn't get painted over. So it lasted a whole year, which was huge news, local news in Adair County, because the rock got painted like every day or every week. And so a whole year goes by where this is this rock has stayed with this mural. And so I didn't want to kill the spirit of the rock. So it came around a Memorial Day again. I painted it again. It was the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. And so that snowballed into an annual tradition where at the beginning of May, I go out to this original rock, I paint it white.