Standing at the center of the “Honoring All Veterans Memorial” that was dedicated Monday in Richfield, Minn., is a bronze statue of longtime Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 292 member and World War II veteran Chuck Lindberg, who raised the first U.S. flag on Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945.

Most of us know the iconic image captured by photographer Joe Rosenthal that was recreated for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va. But earlier that day Lindberg and several other Marines, after four days of bloody combat, were the first patrol to make it to the top of Mount Suribachi.

There they attached an American flag to a piece of water pipe and planted it atop the mountain. Later that day another group of Marines replaced the first flag with a larger one and that was the moment captured by Rosenthal.

When the iconic picture was taken, Lindberg was no longer on top of the mountain. He was fighting Japanese soldiers hiding in caves only yards from the flag.

In 1995, the Marine Corps helped set the record straight, and Lindberg—a lifelong resident of Richfield—and the other first flag raisers were officially recognized. He told local reporters that before the official acknowledgement came, whenever he told of the first flag-raising, most people didn’t believe him.

Brian Peterson, a retired member of Local 292 who is on the memorial’s board, said that when a local artist, Travis Gorshe, was commissioned to build the monument in Richfield’s Veterans Memorial Park, Lindberg quickly became the focal point of the plans.

Lindberg died in 2007, shortly after attending the memorial’s groundbreaking. At yesterday’s Memorial Day ceremonies, his son Rod Lindberg said:

Bottom of my heart, dad was a hero. You know for what he did, but the way he lived his life afterward made him just as much a hero.

Read more from the IBEW.