Lottery game to aid vets features Adair County painted rock

DES MOINES – The Iowa Lottery is featuring a special veterans' monument on its latest instant-scratch game dedicated to raising money to support veterans and their families.

Ticket sales began Monday for the lottery's $2 “The Freedom Rock” game, which features an image that Greenfield artist Ray “Bubba” Sorensen II painted on a 25-foot-high, 56-ton boulder in Adair County.

For 11 years, Sorensen, 29, has painted the giant rock with patriotic images as a tribute to U.S. veterans for Memorial Day. He first was inspired to paint the boulder in 1999 after seeing the move “Saving Private Ryan,” after which the concept “snowballed” and the monument has because a draw for worldwide visitors as well as the inspiration for a new lottery game.

Sorensen pointed to a helicopter image on the rock, noting the paint for that object contained the donated ashes of 16 different Vietnam-era veterans whose families or loved ones chose the boulder as a final resting place.

“It's kind of like a tomb of the unknown for me. It's special,” Sorensen said Monday of the tradition that began when a group of veterans traveling to Washington, D.C., asked to spread the ashes of a comrade at the site. He got the idea instead to put the ashes in the paint and incorporate them in the lasting tribute.

Mary Neubauer, lottery vice president of external relations, said as soon as the Legislature granted authority in 2008 for the lottery to produce games to benefit veterans, officials began to receive requests and reached agreement with Sorensen to feature his work on lottery tickets.

The first lottery game to benefit the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund began sales in July 2008, and Neubauer estimated proceeds for the just-ended 2009 fiscal year with top $2.7 million.

Players buying “ The Freedom Rock” lottery game tickets have a chance to win up to 10 times on each ticket, with prizes ranging from $2 to $7,777. The next pull-tab game to benefit the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund will begin sales July 20.