More than a memorial: Honoring Erik Bunger and Augustana’s veterans

Three paths converge behind the Madsen Center at the site of a recently constructed Augustana landmark: a veterans memorial bench built two years ago dedicated to Erik Bunger, an Augustana graduate and U.S. Army veteran whose legacy outlasts his time on campus.

To his mother, professor emerita Susan Claussen Bunger, this memorial bench means more than honoring her son — it’s a tribute to the veterans who fight for the freedom of people they may never meet. 

Bunger joined the Army in March 2001 to earn money for his education, see the world and protect his country. He served as a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. 

He returned in 2005 to finish his degree in government and international affairs at Augustana, but came back harboring many physical and mental injuries. 

Claussen Bunger said the hardest thing for her son to deal with was not his physical injuries, but instead the moral and emotional injuries that remained unseen.

“It’s kind of hard for them to reconcile that within society because people don’t really understand what they saw and what they went through,” Claussen Bunger said. 

Even through her son’s ongoing battles with his mind and body, Claussen Bunger said he continued to serve in ways that felt important to him. He volunteered for the Sioux Falls Humane Society, Special Olympics and efforts to fund breast cancer research. 

When professors Patrick Hicks and Peg Preston created their Great War class in 2005, it was initially a way for students to talk about things like shellshock, PTSD and what it’s like to be on the front line. Hicks said they wanted to create a space to talk about the Iraq War without directly talking about the Iraq War. 

“No one wanted to talk about the war, and I was an opponent of that war, but I made a decision early on that I'm going to support the troops,” Hicks said. “You can be against the war, but you can be for the people that are being asked to fight in it.”

Bunger took this class, and Hicks said he and other students appreciated the perspective that Bunger brought from his firsthand account of battle and the effects of war. 

After graduation, Hicks asked Bunger to come back and teach a lesson each year to this class. Hicks described that one year, Bunger simulated a battle for the class. 

Bunger brought beach balls, pool noodles and tennis balls and asked students to follow intricate instructions at a high-speed pace. Hicks said the exercise only lasted a few minutes, but it was chaos — students were throwing, catching, passing and shouting, trying to remember how each instruction corresponded to each material, all while the items were flying across the room around them.

“He said, ‘I can't replicate combat, but I can replicate the confusion of combat,’” Hicks said.

An assignment in Hicks and Preston’s Great War class was to decide if Augustana needed a war memorial, and if so, what that memorial should be.

“We gave Erik that assignment,” Hicks said. “Now, the war memorial on campus is to my friend Erik.”

In 2020, Bunger succumbed to the effects of his post-war conditions, passing away peacefully in his sleep according to Claussen Bunger.

Claussen Bunger and her husband decided to use the money Bunger left behind to create a memorial. She said it wasn’t hard to choose Augustana as the place for this memorial, as it feels like home for herself and her family. 

The memorial bench is placed between multiple paths because of Bunger’s love for Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” and because of Augustana’s belief that students leave campus to serve — wherever that may be. 

Claussen Bunger also wanted the bench to stand for all veterans because of the many veterans and their families that make up the Augustana community.  

Pam Miller, former Augustana chief of staff, held a key administrative role in giving this memorial a place on campus. She helped guide the approval process and worked with Associate Vice President of Campus Safety Rick Tupper to make sure the memorial aligned with campus building requirements. 

Whenever Miller walks past the bench, she places a hand on it or pauses to sit for a while.

“I never met Erik, but I remember him and I honor him,” Miller said. “It just gives me a lot of peace to know that we haven't forgotten those service members who have given their lives for us.”

The bench was installed over the summer in 2024 and dedicated in May 2025. Claussen Bunger said the timing was important to her because her husband was able to see it and attend the dedication ceremony before he passed away last spring.

Claussen Bunger visits the memorial once a week to clean it and feels especially full-hearted when she sees students and community members taking a moment to rest there. Even rabbit tracks in the snow surrounding the memorial cause her to think about her son’s dedication to protecting all creatures great and small.

“I think he was most proud of the fact that he stood up and went in service anonymously for people that didn't even know him,” Claussen Bunger said.