The Freedom Rock

 Photographs show a rock painted with patriotic scenes alongside an Iowa highway.

Ray "Bubba" Sorensen II, now a Des Moines resident who works as an ad/web designer, was a 19-year-old Iowa State University student who had seen the Greenfield rock many times before when, around Memorial Day in 1999, he decided to begin what has become an ongoing artistic tribute to America's veterans:
It was right around Memorial Day, and I was driving by that rock and wondered what it would be like if I actually took the time to go out there and paint it. And so I painted it with the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. I got such a huge response that I kept painting it. I've been painting it for the last five years with tributes to veterans on Memorial Day.