Family members of a soldier killed in Iraq in October 2005 pulled his name from a pair of boots in a temporary memorial at University of Arizona this afternoon and left in disgust.

The display - "Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War" - is sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker social justice organization, to bring attention to war deaths. A larger traveling exhibit of more than 3,000 pairs of boots memorializes all of the U.S. military dead.

The local display features a pair of combat boots for each Arizonan killed in the war and civilian shoes representing the Iraqi dead. The display will be on the UA Mall through Saturday afternoon.

Organizers call the memorials nonpolitical and nonjudgmental, but they are an affront to the men and women who have died over the past five years, said relatives of U.S. Army Spec. Thomas Byrd, 21, a Santa Rita High School graduate killed by a roadside bomb near Baghdad.

"You would think if they were honoring the military, they would have a flag here," said Susan Mortensen, Byrd's aunt, anger seething in her voice.

Organizers had sent Byrd's family an invitation assuring them that the traveling display would not be a protest or demonstration. But when Jessica Pettit, a UA student who helped organize the event, referred to soldiers as "death machines," the family turned and left.

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Byrd's grandmother, Sandy Webber, was angry at the lack of flags and the reference to soldiers as death machines. Weber said her pride in her grandson's military service is misunderstood by the organizers of the display, whom she considers war protesters...