REMEMBERING DEPARTED HEROES
A community restores defaced WWI monument
B
rian Hartig, a U.S.
Marine Corps veteran of the first Gulf
War, is co-founder
of The Brownstone
Detectives, a group
that focuses on the
social and physical histories
of old homes.
In May 2015, Brian attended the rededication of the war
memorial “Victory & Peace,”
located in Brooklyn’s Saratoga Park. He recalls:
On the original monument dedication: After nearly three years of
mourning, Stuyvesant East
was ready to remember its
dead in a very public way.
On 11 September 1921, after neighbors in the eastern section of Stuyvesant
Heights had spent two
years collecting the $6,000
necessary to defray the cost
of a war memorial, the Victory and Peace statue was
finally delivered to Saratoga Square. With great
pomp and circumstance,
the 6-ton war memorial,
sculpted by James Novelli,
was unveiled at the Saratoga Avenue entrance to the
Saratoga Square in front of
more than 3,000 witnesses.
“We offered the best
we had in this great cause
and they never failed us,”
Elmer G. Sammis, president of the Draft Board 31,
commented to the crowd
gathered. “So long as the
memory of our departed
heroes survives,” Sammis
continued, “we must be
vigilant to preserve the
heritage which they have
left us.”
The decline of the monument: At some point,
though, the memory of
those departed heroes did
begin to fade. The memorial wreaths were laid
less and less, salutes fired
more infrequently, and
taps sounded only every
few years or so, as the rolls
of the American Legion
Posts fell in number and
residents moved out of the
neighborhoods, and the
parents of the war dead
passed on themselves. The
bronze plates, containing
the names of the men from
the area who had lost their
lives during WWI, were
stolen from the Saratoga
War Memorial in 1974.
52 FORWARD MARCH AMERICA’S PARADE
Then, 26 years later in
2000, the statue of “Victory
and Peace” met its final humiliation when the bronze
figure itself was stolen and
cut into pieces by thieves.
All that remained was the
Massachusetts pink granite base which showed the
shadows of the former rolls
and the statue of Victory
and Peace.
Revival and rededication: In recent years, a
number of local citizens
started a petition to recreate the stolen statue and
plates and return them to
their former glory within the park. That petition
eventually had its effect as
the City of New York allocated the money to fund
this project. During the last
week in May, the Parks
Department set up a chain
link fence in preparation
for placing a reproduction
of “Victory & Peace” – and
the rolls listing the names
of the war dead – back onto
the original marble base. A
few months later the memorial was returned to its
base and the rededication
ceremony was held, which
included descendants of
some of the men of Stuyvesant East who made the
ultimate sacrifice during
WWI.
Brian’s visit prompted
The Brownstone Detectives to begin working on a
project with the Parks Department to locate pictures,
stories, and relatives of the
men who gave their lives in
the war.
THE NY PUBLIC
LIBRARY
A RESOURCE FOR
VETERANS
T
he New York
Public Library
has sponsored
several
recent veterans
initiatives