THE ANDOVER VETERAN’S MEMORIAL WALL
Written by William A. Greene
November, 2012
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Much work was done to put this together. It all started back in 1992, while placing American flags on deceased veteran’s graves. Many of the Civil War Veteran’s grave markers were in very sad shape. So I decided to see if there was any way to replace their headstones.
Being Service Officer of the Lynch – Burgett Post 397, I knew every veteran is entitled to a military headstone. Just to make sure I called
I won’t go into the complete story as it is a long one. I started with a list of 81 names of Civil War Veteran’s back in 1992 and by the end of 2002, I had close to 290. I thought that I was done but I have added 7 more since then.
Once done with them I went on to do WWI, WWII, Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Philippine War, Spanish American War, Mexican Border War, Korean War, Vietnam, Granada – Lebanon War, Panama, the Persian Gulf War and Peace Time Veterans. These were all done from the years of 2002 thru 2012. We are still finding names and are adding them as we go along.
Now that we have all of the names and burial places, what are we going to do with them?
In about 2003 Mr. William Berg, superintendent of Andover Central School, went to then Andover Historian Robert “Moose” Baker and threw out the idea of building a memorial wall to the Andover Veterans at the school. He said he had a wall there that would be perfect. While in the early stages of this, Robert “Moose” Baker passed away. Everything was put on hold for a couple of years and again Mr. Berg approached the Lynch – Burgett Post 397 with his idea. There wasn’t much discussion, it was agreed that this was a wonderful idea.
A committee of Wayne Grant, Vincent Burrows and Bill “Bubba” Greene were assigned to meet with Mr. Berg. We had meetings throughout the year of 2010. We had to replace Mr. Burrows due to health reasons and Tad Manske was chosen to take his place on the committee.
We had many ideas that were discussed but we needed some more input. Mr. Berg brought on Mr. James Ninos (art instructor) and Mr. Zack Owens (tech instructor) they were just what we needed. They were very important in the layout and in the building of the display cases.
It wasn’t long and we were ready to start building our “Memorial”. Mr. Owen asked for volunteers from his tech classes to help in the designing and building the display cases. They were; Matt Dowd, Kyle Glenn, Warren Johannes, Pat Coyle, Alex Emery, Cody Green, Joe Bryan and Taylor Jackson. They did a wonderful job. Mr. Ninos did all of the designing, layout and printing of the names.
I supplied the almost 1,500 name of all of the veterans of
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Then the colors were posted by the Lynch – Burgett Post 397.
After that the band played the theme songs of each branch of the armed forces and as they did,
students posted each of their flags.
Mr. Berg then introduced Village Mayor Elaine Towner, Town Supervisor Gus Weber, School Board President Cynthia Vars., Allegany County Veteran’s Service Officer, Mike Hennessy and guest speaker Bill Greene.
Mr. Greene gave a talk on the history of Veteran’s Day and then talked about his years of finding
The colors and all other flags were retrieved ending the program.
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(Above, the Public shares viewing with Veterans for the first time, Veterans Day, 2012)
(Above, several WW II Veterans view the listings)
Please take the time to go and see what has been done. I think you will be very proud of the work that has gone into this project.
Thank you Mr. Berg for your vision and help in making this all come true.