Veterans memorial vandalism dishonors all
Wallingford Police Chief John Ventura said it best: “The deliberate and disgraceful attack on the memory of these heroes will not be tolerated.”
Ventura was referring to the recent despicable acts of vandalism that took place at the Veteran’s Memorial at Dutton Park on North Main Street in Wallingford.
“This memorial is to honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice to protect the freedoms we enjoy on a daily basis,” Ventura said, also noting the vandalism as well as “hateful rhetoric that members of the Wallingford community have been exposed to.”
The Veteran’s Memorial at the park was vandalized on two occasions, according to Ventura.
Ventura also told WVIT-TV that one of the incidents of vandalism included a swastika spray-painted across the names of veterans that are contained on a monument at the park.
There is nothing that the swastika can symbolize other than hate.
Yet even as Wallingford faces vandalism at a site that should be free from anything that defaces it, it also turns out that vandalism at such sites has occurred in many states.
In Dorchester, Massachusetts, for example, in May 2019 vandalism occurred at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, desecration that the leader of a veterans group noted as “deranged,” the Boston Herald reported.
Joe Zinck, the president of the Dorchester Vietnam Memorial Committee, told the Herald, “It’s very frustrating.”
“Unless we find the person and talk to them we might never know why they chose this site to do it because I don’t think it was a random act,” Zinck said.
A swastika and a hate-filled message were also scrawled on monuments in that incident.
And in Oakland County, Michigan, in October 2021 a memorial in honor of the U.S. military was vandalized, The Oakland Press reported.
Timothy Reese, executive director of the Veterans Tribute of Oakland Township and a retired U.S. Army colonel, told the Press that the vandals caused about $26,000 in damage to the U.S. Coast Guard portion of the memorial there.
In another example, The Tuscaloosa News in Alabama reported earlier this year that Tuscaloosa County Park and Recreation Authority officials said vandals damaged two battle crosses at Veterans Memorial Park in Tuscaloosa, destroying one of the monuments.
The news organization noted that a “battle cross is a traditional way of honoring soldiers who have given their lives in combat” and that the cemetery had them representing World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There may be people in Tuscaloosa who did not agree with those wars; there may be people in Connecticut who did not either.
But according to the National Military Museum, there were 416,800 U.S military deaths during WWII, and according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History, 4,347 of those deaths were Connecticut residents who were in the U.S. Army alone.
The Connecticut History online site reports that in a more recent era more than 600 state service members died in the Vietnam War, noting “while major cities like Hartford felt the brunt of the losses, few communities in Connecticut were unaffected.”
Military personnel with ties to Connecticut also died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Further, the U.S. Census says there were more than 160,000 veterans living in Connecticut in the period from 2016-2020.
Looked at across decades and service, that is many people in the state who gave their lives in war, are veterans of war and service to the military, or have a strong connection to those who served or died.
That alone offers a powerful reason for there to be memorial sites for families, friends and loved ones to visit as a way to recall the person or simply show respect.
And respect is not what was shown in the vandalism in Wallingford. The words and symbolism used represent hate and lack or understanding of the sacrifices made by those who serve and their families.
Ventura said police offered a $1,000 reward to anyone with information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the damage at Dutton Park. Wallingford police have since made an arrest in connection with the vandalism.
We do not know, and it will be up a court to decide, whether the suspect is guilty or not.
But the fact remains that anyone who would deface such a memorial shows a true lack of respect.