Lester Prairie's Veterans Memorial honors all who served in the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Merchant Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard, with a special note to Ray Kirkpatrick, an Army soldier killed in France's Argonne Forest in November 1918 as the first soldier from the area to lose his life in combat in World War I. Dedicated in 2011 by B Lloyd E Groenke, the memorial records a long roll of local veterans and deceased veterans whose service spans World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, peacetime duty, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan, Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Panama, Lebanon, Bosnia, and Operation New Dawn, reflecting military service across many generations.