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Quiet, neatly-spaced rows of empty boots — 1,545 pairs of them — stretched across the floor of the Fisher Pavilion for two days, when Eyes Wide Open visited Seattle. This powerful traveling exhibit serves as a way to “put a human face on the losses of the Iraq war,” according to Susan Segall, regional director of AFSC for the Pacific Northwest. Iraqi civilian casualties are represented by 1,000 pairs of everyday shoes of all kinds. The exact number of these casualties is unknowable.

Stacy Livingston, of Blaine, spoke in honor of her brother Joe Blickenstaff, who died in Iraq at the age of 23. “I hope that people who see this exhibit can understand what each pair of shoes or boots represent,” she told a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “It was a life. It had hopes and dreams…For every pair of shoes, there are a hundred more people that are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, and whose families are hurting and missing them.”

According to AFSC general secretary Mary Ellen McNish, “This…is a memorial to those who have fallen and a witness to our belief that no war can justify its human cost.”

Traveling exhibit of empty boots symbolizes lives lost to war
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -  April 9, 2005
After Joe Blickenstaff died in Iraq, his older brother inherited his Army-issued, sand-colored boots. They didn't hold up well in Washington's rain and cold, and they were too small, but Blickenstaff's brother wore them anyway. "You do strange things when you miss someone," said their sister, Stacy Livingston.For her, the boots were a powerful symbol of a beloved life cut short and a reason she plans to speak at an exhibit that uses that power to illustrate the horror of war. Read full article >

Footing the bill of war
Seattle Times -  April 7, 2005
Dance in them, drink from them, wear them to bed. As long as the military boots came home to Kent with her husband in them, Stacy Bannerman doesn't care what he does with them. Because hundreds of pairs of boots have come home empty, their owners lost to the bomb blasts and gunfire of the war in Iraq. Read full article >

Poem

Sam Hamill, founder and director of Poets Against the War, was inspired by the exhibit to write a poem.  Read the poem >