How Scottsdale remembers
Scottsdale is better known for celebrating than for remembering, but the city keeps three dates every year, and all three happen on or near the Civic Center.
Memorial Day. At 10 a.m. on the last Monday in May, local veterans’ organizations hold a ceremony at the Scottsdale Memorial for the Fallen, on the Civic Center Memorial Lawn next to the Chaplain sculpture, northeast of City Hall at 3939 N. Drinkwater Blvd. The 2026 ceremony, on Monday, May 25, had two speakers: U.S. Rep. David Schweikert and Chief Master Sgt. Wesley T. “Wes” Peel II of the 944th Fighter Wing at Luke Air Force Base. Afterward American Legion Post 44 served lunch to the public at its post on Second Street.
September 11. The Scottsdale Fire Department reads the names of those killed in the 2001 attacks, beginning at 6 a.m. on the lawn of the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. For the 25th anniversary in 2026, the city added a week of oversized memorial displays at its libraries and at Police and Fire headquarters.
Veterans Day. On November 11 the city and local veterans’ organizations hold what the city calls its annual Veterans Day Commemoration on the same Memorial Lawn. Patriotic music starts at 10:30 a.m., and the program begins at 11, the hour of the 1918 armistice. In 2025 the keynote was Mario Valencia, an Air Force veteran who survived the bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia.
All three are free, and none takes more than a morning.
Attending each one
Memorial Day (late May, 10 a.m.). The ceremony is at the Memorial for the Fallen on the Civic Center Memorial Lawn. Park in the free Civic Center garages and walk in. Late-May mornings in Scottsdale are already hot, so bring water and a hat. The 2026 program was organized with local veterans’ groups and had a member of Congress and a senior enlisted leader from Luke Air Force Base as speakers. The tradition worth keeping is the lunch afterward: in 2026 American Legion Post 44 opened its doors at 7145 E. Second St., a short walk west, and served anyone who came. Memorial Day 2027 is Monday, May 31. The city posts the program on its community calendar in May.
September 11 (6 a.m.). The Reading of the Names is the Fire Department’s ceremony. In 2026 it began at 6 a.m. on the Center Lawn/West Bowl at the Center for the Performing Arts and lasted about two and a half hours. Organizers suggested a lawn chair or blanket and water. For the 25th anniversary the city also placed supersized memorial displays around town for the week. Each carried a memorial card for every person killed, and visitors to each site received a commemorative gift:
- Civic Center Library (3839 N. Drinkwater Blvd.): World Trade Center Twin Towers
- Mustang Library (10101 N. 90th St.): Public Safety Memorial Flag
- Arabian Library (10215 E. McDowell Mountain Ranch Road): Pentagon
- Appaloosa Library (7377 E. Silverstone Drive): Plane wing
- Scottsdale Police and Fire Headquarters (8401 E. Indian School Road): a piece of World Trade Center steel and other memorial pieces
In 2026 the Scottsdale Public Library’s website carried the Day of Remembrance schedule. We could not confirm whether the displays appear every year or only for anniversaries, or who built the models.
Veterans Day (November 11, 11 a.m.). The city’s program is on the Memorial Lawn northeast of City Hall. Music begins at 10:30, and the program at 11 includes remarks from local leaders, a keynote and a moment of remembrance. It is free, but the city asks attendees to register so it can plan. Veterans Day 2026 falls on Wednesday, November 11. The city’s community calendar is where the program will appear.
A note on the 2025 keynote: the city’s listing described Mario Valencia as a survivor of “the 1995 attack” on the Khobar Towers. The Khobar Towers bombing took place in June 1996. The 1995 date in the listing appears to be an error.
Older than the lawn
Scottsdale’s organized remembrance predates the Civic Center. VFW Post 3513 was chartered in 1946, and its auxiliary was organized the same year. City historian Joan Fudala records that the post was named for Stanley Crews, a Scottsdale man who died in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines during World War II. When Scottsdale incorporated five years later, the town already had a veterans’ post carrying one of its own sons’ names. American Legion Post 44, on Second Street in Old Town, hosted the public lunch after the 2026 Memorial Day ceremony.
During Vietnam, remembrance in Scottsdale took the form of hospitality. Fudala writes that Camelback Inn hosted wounded service members over the December holidays, where they were welcomed by the Charros and the Howdy Dudettes. In November 1968 the Arizonian advised families to put bug spray in their holiday packages to troops in Vietnam.
The first civic military memorial on the Civic Center that we can document dates to 1976, the year of the Bicentennial and Scottsdale’s 25th anniversary. That year Mayor Bill Jenkins and the city’s veterans’ groups dedicated a plaque at the Civic Center honoring the military. That is why this page gives 1976 as its starting year. The ceremonies may be older or younger than that, and we could not find out which.
What we don’t know
The Scottsdale Memorial for the Fallen is the center of the Memorial Day ceremony, and the record about it is thin. The city’s 75th-anniversary booklet says it was privately funded, honors Scottsdale military who died on active duty, and was dedicated at City Hall in 2023. The same booklet credits the 2020s city with honoring veterans through the Scottsdale Salutes banner program and new memorials, including the Thunderbird II Airfield Veterans Memorial (2018) at the site of the World War II training field. It also notes that a city Veterans Advisory Commission was established in 2019. The city’s 2026 event listing places the memorial “adjacent to the Chaplain sculpture on the Civic Center Memorial Lawn.” We could not confirm the exact dedication date, who designed and paid for it, whether it lists names, or how it relates to the 1976 plaque. The likeliest sources are the City of Scottsdale’s public art and facilities staff, council minutes and resolutions held by the City Clerk, and American Legion Post 44.
The record on the ceremonies themselves is thin too. We know the city called its Veterans Day event “annual” in 2025. We know it held two public Veterans Day observances in 2019, but not where. And we know the 9/11 Reading of the Names was held for the 25th anniversary in 2026 and that the 20th anniversary was marked in 2021. The year each began would turn up in the Scottsdale Progress and city press releases.
Other places to remember
- Pearl Harbor: Fudala notes a memorial next to Salt River Fields honoring those lost when the USS Arizona was sunk on December 7, 1941.
- Old Town on foot: The Memorial Lawn is part of the Civic Center grounds covered in our Old Town walking route and the public art tour.
- The Fourth: The city’s other patriotic holiday is a celebration, not a ceremony. See the Fourth of July.