Dedication ceremony set Sunday
TOWAMENCIN >> Members of the public are invited to help commemorate local veterans by formally dedicating a local landmark.
At 1 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 11, the Towamencin Township Veterans Committee, along with local American Legion Post 933, will hold a short dedication ceremony for its newly designated “Veterans Memorial Park.”
The park is located off Allentown Road just west of the Towamencin Village Shopping Center, and the township’s supervisors
have discussed for much of this year how to properly honor roughly a dozen Revolutionary War veterans buried there.
A township veterans committee was established around 2007 and had originally planned to convert Firehouse Park near Bustard Road into a memorial for veterans, but those plans were put on hold due to construction on the nearby Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
In May 2018, the township asked for local veterans to revive the committee, and that committee recommended over the summer that the “Veterans Memorial Park” designation be shifted to the Tennis-Lukens property, a roughly 11-acre parcel of open space adjacent to a roughly half-acre cemetery.
Guests planning to attend
the ceremony are asked to park at the shopping center, near the former Sears store, and walk down the driveway to the paved path along Allentown Road that leads to the adjacent Tennis-Lukens Cemetery where the ceremony will take place.
The ceremony date of Nov. 11 commemorates the
100th anniversary of the armistice ending hostilities of the First World War. Congress changed the name of the November 11th Armistice Day holiday to Veterans Day in 1954, rededicating the day to the memory of the service personnel of all wars of the United States, according to a statement from the township.
Expected speakers include township supervisors and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Rich Marino, Chaplain and U.S. Army veteran John Hedrick, American Legion Post 933 Commander and U.S. Navy veteran Greg Walpole, and township supervisor and navy veteran Jim Sinz. After an invocation, remarks, and a dedication and placement of roses, “Taps” will be played by local Eagle Scout Hayden MacKay of Troop 141 of Hatfield, according to the township.