Renovated Veterans Memorial Park Ready For Its Public Debut

ORLEANS – Standing in the flatbed of his truck, Tom Blute gave the crane operator the signal, and up it went.

 The refurbished World War I memorial was slowly lowered backside down into Veterans Memorial Park on Oct. 28. After some more careful strapping and positioning, the monument was set on its footing at the end of the park fronting Main Street. 

 Blute, owner of Henry T. Crosby and Son in Harwich, refurbished and cleaned the memorial, the first to be reset in the newly renovated park at Academy Place. Later in the week, a new bronze plaque was set on a rock to commemorate veterans of the Civil War, while additional monuments to honor those who served in the Vietnam and Korean wars will also be set in the park at a later date.

The park has undergone a significant transformation, complete with new utilities, circles and walkways laid with inscribed memorial bricks and new granite seating walls. By Veterans Day, new benches will be set and plantings donated by Agway will be in the ground.

For Kevin Higgins and others on the town’s veterans committee, these final punchlist items represent the finishing touches on a project almost a decade in the planning.

 “It was a labor of love,” said Higgins, the committee’s longtime chair who has been at the forefront of efforts to renovate the aging park.

On Veterans Day, the revitalized park, ground for which broke in the spring, will make its public debut at the 11 a.m. ceremony. After the town’s annual ceremony on the village green Tuesday morning, organizers and attendees will make their way across the street to the memorial park. There, local veterans John Murphy, Cecil Newcomb, Vince Van Norman and Mon Cochran will cut a ceremonial ribbon. They’ll also run a brand new American flag up the flagpole at the World War II memorial in the center of the park.

Plans to renovate the park were spurred on by changes to a plaque on a former monument honoring veterans of the Vietnam and Korean wars, Higgins said. The plaque was amended to include the names of Cochran, a Vietnam veteran, and William Moore, who served in Korea.

During a ceremony in 2017, Higgins called both men over in recognition of their inclusion on the new plaque. But Moore, who was in a wheelchair, could not access the park.

“You remember where I used to stand in the old park.” Higgins said. “I asked Mon and Bill to come forward, because I wanted to show them the new memorial. Mon was standing there, but Bill was on the sidewalk way out on the edge of 28. That was the ‘aha’ moment.”

From there, efforts were made to repoint and reconfigure the memorials and to create room for new ones. The veterans committee and other organizers, including the nonprofit Veterans Memorial Park at Academy Place, Inc., also envisioned a park that can be used more readily by the broader community, complete with better accessibility and places to sit and hold events.

Last week, Higgins and Brian Sosner, the nonprofit’s president, looked at renderings of the project from local architect David Hawk. Together, they admired how closely the finished product came to the drawings.

“I’m absolutely thrilled,” Higgins said. “I couldn’t be any happier with the way the park turned out.”

A key feature of the new park is the space set aside for the placement of specially-inscribed memorial bricks. The nonprofit has raised money for the project through sales of the bricks, about 1,000 of which have already been set in a large circle at the rear of the park, Sosner said. 

“There’s another 300 at the (department of public works) warehouse or on order. They’ll go into the second circle, more likely in the springtime,” he said.

Higgins, meanwhile, said there is plenty of room to add more inscribed bricks. Non-inscribed bricks currently set can be swapped out for inscribed ones as orders come in, he said. 

Local investment in the park project has gone well beyond that of the veterans committee and the nonprofit, Higgins said. The project contractor, GFM Enterprises, altered its schedule to accommodate local business and vendors that offered to volunteer their time to the project, he said. Sosner also gave credit to the donors who helped turn the park into the proper memorial veterans deserve.

“I’m just really proud that they came through, and that the park is something to really admire and reflect on and just enjoy,” he said.

Higgins has bricks in the park honoring various family members who served, including his father, brother and Uncle Jack, who served in World War II.

“But you don’t know about anything that he did,” he said of his uncle’s service. “Well, I have a brick in the park now that identifies him as being part of the [Battle of Saipan] invasion. He was part of Iwo Jima. He was wounded on Iwo Jima.”

Historically, the park has drawn people twice a year, on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. But Sosner said organizers hope that the new park will be put to broader public use for other programming, or just for people to stop by and reflect.

“It’s recreational, not just historic,” he said.

Looking ahead, Higgins said the largely-completed park is built to serve the community for the next 200 years. That includes space for future memorials down the road as needed.

 “If I look back on all the time I spent on it, it makes my head spin,” he said. “But I look back on it and it wasn’t work. This was something we wanted to do to honor the veterans.”