Additional Names Sought For Korean, Vietnam War Memorials

ORLEANS – As the veterans committee continues to plan for the installation of new monuments in the renovated Veterans Memorial Park, an unexpected challenge has arisen. 

New information has revealed that there are dozens of local veterans of the Korean and Vietnam Wars whose names were not included in the shared memorial that formerly stood in the park for decades.

“It’s not a bad dilemma,” said Kevin Higgins, the committee’s chair. “It’s just not as cut and dry as we hoped it would be.”

The committee hopes to officially unveil the new Korean War memorial “on or about” July 4, Higgins said, while the new Vietnam memorial could be ready in time for Veterans Day. The committee has approved a rose granite stone and bronze plaque for the Korean memorial, and Higgins said the committee is weighing its options for the design of the Vietnam stone.

But on top of that, the committee is trying to sort out how many names should be included on each memorial. The names of 45 Korean War veterans were on the former joint memorial, but Higgins said the committee believes the actual number of local veterans who served in the conflict is closer to 75.

The number of names to be included on the Vietnam memorial is also still to be determined, Higgins said. The joint memorial had the names of 60 local Vietnam veterans, but he said a historical consultant working with Veterans Memorial Park at Academy Place, Inc., the nonprofit that has been raising money for the park renovations, has determined that the number is closer to 90.

“We’re assuming either not everyone got the original memo, so to speak, to have their name on that memorial, or those people didn’t want their names on the memorial because you had to request to be on it to begin with,” Higgins said.

Part of the confusion stems from uncertainty around what criteria officials used to include names on the original memorial. Higgins said it was believed that veterans needed to have a DD Form 214, or official discharge papers, identifying them as a resident of Orleans at the time of their respective conflict. But through the historical consultant, the committee has found that there are names on the joint monument of veterans that did not have the form.

“We don’t know what the standard was in the ‘60s or ‘70s,” Higgins said. “I thought it was that the DD Form 214 had to be presented, but now the historian has shown us that there are names on there that don’t reflect Orleans residents.”

Higgins said in the coming months the committee will work toward settling on a list of names for each memorial. In the case of the Korean War memorial, he said the committee needs to settle on a list of names to be engraved on the plaque by the end of May in order to have the memorial ready by July 4.

Fortunately, the plaques will leave space for additional names to be added after the memorials are completed, Higgins said.

“In the past, they had all the names on the memorial alphabetically,’ he said. “But that doesn’t work if people come in afterward, so you put the names on randomly. That way if you add things down the road they don’t look out of place.”

Looking further ahead, the committee also plans to situate a memorial honoring veterans of the War on Terror in the new park, Higgins said.

In other Veterans Park news, a $20,000 request for Community Preservation Act funding at the upcoming May 11 annual town meeting was withdrawn from consideration last month. Higgins said the money would have gone to retroactively pay for work done on the new World War I memorial in the park, but it was withdrawn upon learning that the cost was covered by the project contractor, GFM Enterprises.