Veterans end 18-year tour of duty in Windsor

By TORY DENIS
[email protected]
WINDSOR, Vt. — An 18-year odyssey came to an end this month as the four remaining active members of a Windsor Veterans Memorial Committee (VMC) voted to disband. The committee has passed the torch, and more than $35,000 in funds earmarked for the memorial’s upkeep, to the care of the American Legion Post No. 25 in Windsor.  

“We got to be too old to raise a flag and to lower a flag,” said Bernie Shaban, one of the original committee founders.

So, “on a sad note,” he said, the four last committee members voted on March 18 to officially relinquish and transfer all assets to the Legion, which will take care of the funds as a fiscal agent. After 18 years of dedication to creating, upgrading and maintaining the Veterans Memorial at Constitution Park in downtown Windsor, the Legion will now hold the funds in reserve for the memorial’s maintenance and upkeep.

Three of the final four committee members, Bernie Shaban, Milt Ducharme and Doug Whitcomb, gathered on Tuesday at Shaban’s home in Windsor to talk about nearly two decades of caring for the memorial, and what they hope to see in the future.

The fourth member, Rudy Hanecak, was not a veteran, but joined the committee “fresh out of college” and help set up the program. He was present on Tuesday, but his co-committee members said he has been instrumental in the work they have done, and has also been a past selectman for the town.

Ducharme, Shaban and Whitcomb are all U.S. military veterans. Ducharme served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years as a chief petty officer, and worked for 22 years at the VA hospital. He has also served as a Windsor selectman, once went to Russia to help built a church there, and has been to Antarctica five times, each time on a 6-month deployment, building bases.

Whitcomb started his service in the old Company G of the National Guard in Windsor, just a couple of years out of high school, he said. He was in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam era, and then became involved in the Legion. He is now commander of the American Legion Post. No. 25, along with serving on the VMC.

Shaban said he was frolicking with a girl in Lake George, New York when he got activated for the Korean War. He, too, was serving in the Company G, where he said 92 Windsor residents were activated at the time.

They were sent to Camp Pickett, Virginia, and then to Germany, while many others were sent to Korea. He later worked for 30 years in the Vermont Dept. of Corrections.

The VMC, which he helped create, was “the best committee that Windsor ever had” and was created to help raise funds for “the best memorial in Vermont,” Shaban said. The committee was all-volunteer, with the exception of the sculptor Larry Nowlan Jr., who received $50,000 for his commission.

Whitcomb was not one of the original founders, but did play a pivotal role, helping convince the Legion to get behind it, including a $30,000 donation from American Legion Post No. 25 to launch the Veterans Memorial effort. “So now that (money) is sort of being returned, and there is nobody better to take care of it,” he said.

The VMC was formed in November 1999 as an ad-hoc committee to discuss replacing a wooden honor roll of names lost to a fire. The committee quickly formalized a bigger plan and “a more permanent vision that would change the landscape of downtown Windsor forever,” Hanecak said.

This ad-hoc group became officially recognized by the town of Windsor in 2000 and became a sub-committee of the American Legion Post No. 25 and the town for donation purposes by the end of 2000, finally forming a separate trust to maintain the maintenance funds in 2010.

It became known as the Windsor War Memorial Committee, and later as the VMC.

The committee elected Shaban as the chair and William “Wishy” White as vice chair, and began a plan to create a lasting memorial using local resources and talent from the region.

Along with Shaban, Ducharme, Whitcomb, Nowlan and White, the committee included Malcolm “Stubbie” Craig, Butch Noel, Joe Grey, Arthur Grosjean, Francis Robideau, Urban Bates, Bob Haight, Aaron Fitzherbert, Robert Walsh, Rudy Hanecak III, Bob Sheppard, Nick Grano, Bill Hochstin, Terry Allen, and Ken Cooley.

After recruiting Nowlan from Pennsylvania to create the larger-than-life sized bronze statue, Nowlan in turn recruited Haight to design the base for the statue.

Together, the committee developed a park to tell the history of Windsor’s military service in a peaceful and walkable timeline that includes shaded benches, a path around a common, and several engraved memorial stones with the names of 1,700 Windsor residents who served in the U.S. Armed Forces from World War I through Desert Storm.

The project was laid out in three phases. The first was a 7 1/2-foot bronze statue depicting an infantry soldier returning from patrol in a combat uniform incorporating elements from all past military conflicts.

Nowlan, the sculptor, felt “such a connection to the project” that the dog tags used to represent the soldier’s fallen brother-in-arms were copied from those belonging to Nowlan’s father, and which he wore in Korea, according to Hanecak.

The second phase was the placement of 11 boulders with smooth fronts for engraving. Nine of these, arranged chronologically, include the names of Windsor residents who served in specific military conflicts.

The remaining two boulders remain blank to represent those currently serving in the armed forces, and to reserve space for the names of those who will serve in future wars and conflicts.  

The final phase was to update the lighting, flags, path and landscaping for the park.

It took committee members approximately three years to fully research all the names of Windsor residents who have served. Knowing that the research of the names would take numerous years to finalize, the committee began the project fundraising for the statue portion with start-up funds transferred from an old Veterans Memorial account held by the town of Windsor — but unused for decades — along with small fundraisers from selling rock candy and chocolate bars, glow in the dark necklaces at a local festival, and having stores hang placards celebrating Molly Pitcher Day in celebration of a military folk hero.

The most significant boosts to the project came from the gift of $30,000 from the American Legion Post No. 25, followed by $20,000 appropriated through an article passed by Windsor voters, another $20,000 earmarked from the state of Vermont, and $24,000 in federal funding secured by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, which covered the cost of the first phase of the $250,000 project, all according to Hanecak.

When the Legion voted to give $30,000, the biggest donation of any Legion in Vermont, “we didn’t forget that,” Shaban said. “So we thought we should give it back to that organization.”

Earlier donations have also came from civic organizations, Legion posts, and other veterans’ organizations across Vermont and a large number of individual contributors, many of whom were active duty personnel, veterans, or donating in the name of veterans who had served in their families.

Phase 1 was completed and dedicated in 2000, and that completion began a new tradition of holding Memorial Day exercises at the memorial.

Whitcomb and Shaban both said it is important to note that much of the donations were veterans helping veterans.

The new account at the American Legion Post No. 25 will be set up with legal paperwork that states “the funds be used for nothing other than upkeep,” and for maintenance at the park, either by Post No. 25 or by any successors, Whitcomb said.

At the dedication, keynote speaker Col. Arthur Yando and others praised the memorial centerpiece and offered reflection on those from Windsor who had served.

Phase 2 was completed and dedicated three years later. Utilizing Mount Ascutney granite dedicated by Stoughton Farm in Weathersfield, from the foothills of Mt. Ascutney, in-kind services and materials from companies such as Miller Construction, Willey Earth Moving, Blanchard

Contracting, Allen Electric and others, the overall cost of completions was not only reduced, but sped up, Hanecak said.

The boulders were cut and engraved by Granite Industries of Vermont in Barre, which Hanecak said was a company with “numerous military memorials to their credit,” and local artist Aaron Fitzhebert did on-site engraving and other stone work.

The names were engraved in Barre at $4 per letter, with an average of 17 letters per name. With 1,700 names to be engraved, that part of the project was paid for through the funding provided by Sanders’ office.

“He was very good to us,” Shaban said.

Phase 3 included beautification to the park, landscaping upgrades, lighting upgrades and the development of the maintenance fund. A plan for a brick pathway was forgone for a packed gravel path, because to lay the brick work would have damaged the root system of ornamental trees around the park. An official dedication statement was read at the dedication: “In remembrance of all the brave men and women who fought to keep our country free. May our futures be worthy of their sacrifices forever more.”

After the dedication and completion of Phases 2 and 3, the committee remained together in an effort to finish their work and upgrade the Gulf War Era stones to include the names of those serving during the Afghan and Iraq War II names after the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, Hanecak said.

The committee wanted to add those names alongside the rest that served from Windsor through history from the country’s fight for Independence to today to truly complete the memorial, Hanecak said. However, due to new privacy rules, those names became “unattainable and bogged down with red tape,” he said.

Looking forward, the former committee members said that they hope one day those names can be properly added to the memorial.

“There are things to be done,” Ducharme said.

They would also like to see stones cleaned, the flags kept up, and the park maintained, he said. Though they have reached out to younger veterans in the area, they seem “too busy” or lacking interest in taking part in the committee, though if enough interest is generated, they could start a new committee.  

Shaban also expressed that more services could benefit local veterans. For example, he would like to see the former state prison farm in Windsor turned into a veterans’ home, and stated it would be an ideal location.

“I would not mind or hesitate for one minute to have my vital signs taken by a homeless veteran, or play cribbage with a homeless veteran, or to be invited to a community dinner,” he said.

The four former VMC committee members plan to make a formal presentation on the committee’s dissolution and the Legion’s new fiscal role on Memorial Day, May 28, at the Veterans Memorial.