For ex-Boy Scouts, a monumental effort
30 years later, troop returns to rededicate the veterans memorial it helped build
HARTFORD — On a hot, humid Memorial Day 30 years ago, a group of Boy Scouts from Troop105 in Hartford dedicated the first Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the city on the Fairfield Avenue green.
On Monday, about two dozen of them will be returning —including the original master of ceremonies, four flag raisers, the bugler and the drummer —when the 9-foot tall black granite monument that bears the names of 40 city residents who died in the war is rededicated. Some of the Scouts will reprise their roles in the 1989 ceremony.
The memorial, at the intersection of Fairfield and New Britain avenues, started out as a smaller effort to install a flag pole on the site, like other greens around the city, and dedicate it to Vietnam veterans. But then, bigger plans prevailed.
Scouts went door to door in the city, handing out 10,000 flyers to raise funds for the project, and they were able to raise enough money for the flag pole. They were about $30,000 short of the total they needed for the monument until Hartford Courant columnist Tom Condon wrote about the effort on Nov. 10, 1988. It was the day before the troop was scheduled to dedicate the 40-foot flag pole.
“The flagpole is supposed to be the first part of a memorial to the Hartford men and women who served in Vietnam,” wrote Condon, who was also a Vietnam veteran. “But if some more money isn’t forthcoming there won’t be a second part. In other words, there won’t be a monument.”
Condon’s column jumpstarted fundraising efforts and on May 26, 1989, the monument, which was designed by the father of a Troop 105 Scout, was dedicated. Among the 40 names of the dead on the monument are Edmund Eddy and Edward Bishop, two former members of Troop 105.
Bishop, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, went missing in action in April 1970, and his body has not been recovered yet. He was declared dead in 1978.
Bishop’s sister, Alicia Dellaripa, was 15 when he went missing. She said she will be at the ceremony on Monday “because these men and women make our country what it is.”
Dellaripa, who remembered Bishop as the best big brother a sister could have, said it will be “rough” to be there, “but I need to be.”
The event is being organized by retired Hartford police officer William Gervais, who was Scoutmaster at the time and currently serves as a member of the Troop 105 committee.
Rob Davis, a member of the troop in 1989 who went on to be one of four in the group to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout, and also a retired Hartford police officer now working for the East Hartford Police Department, said Gervais has kept them involved with the troop over the years through different activities. That, he said, made it fairly easy for Gervais to track them down and get them back together for the rededication.
Plus, said Chad Schrock, who appeared saluting in uniform in a full page ad in the Courant thanking hundreds of donors to the project, “Bill has a way — you don’t say no.”
For Gervais, the goal of Monday’s rededication is to make sure the sacrifices made by the 40 men whose names are on the monument are not forgotten and to honor all who served from every town, every war and every branch of military service.
Not all of the returning Boy Scouts are local though. Jose Sierra, is making the trip from San Marcos, Texas. Sierra, who retired after 20 years in the U.S. Army and now works as a police officer in Austin, will be one of four former Scouts who will raise the American and POW/MIA flags on Monday.
Sierra, who served two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, said it’s important to be there on Monday to remember friends he lost in combat and to reunite with fellow Scouts who helped make the first Vietnam veteran’s monument in the city happen.
“It was a great experience growing up in Hartford,” Sierra said. “It will definitely strike an emotional chord.”
The Memorial Day ceremony will begin at 9:30 a.m. on the green at New Britain and Fairfield avenues. For information, call 860-3053309.