The six men from Melrose who perished during the Korean War will be honored permanently on Sunday as the City of Melrose dedicates a beautiful black granite monument featuring their names and likenesses.

The monument will serve as a place for remembrance and reflection for all who served in sacrificed in the war known commonly as "The Forgotten War."

The dedication will feature guest speaker and Korean War veteran Joe Sullivan, the Moulaison family, students from Operation Remember, traditional military honors and music honoring Memorial Day.

Monument Symbolism

A good veteran monument will remember and it will educate. This monument does both by including the names and pictures of the fallen and paying tribute to the more than 1,000 Melrosians who served during the Korean War era.

The 54 paving stones found in front of the monument represent the 54,000 U.S. service members killed during the Korean War conflict. The layout of the paving stones and the juniper plants found between them pay homage to the National Korean War Memorial in Washington DC.

The six plantings behind the monument represent the six KIA from Melrose.

The nine bushes planted around the monument represent the nine men from Melrose who perished during the conflict home and abroad.

The benches not only represent the years of the Korean War, but also a response to comments at the spring veteran town hall meeting that this monument should have a place for reflection.

The "Freedom Is Not Free" expression found at the bottom of the stone also comes directly from the National Korean War Monument, a place where students and veterans from Operation Remember placed a wreath of remembrance on behalf of the city.

This dedication is truly a community effort. 

* Operation Remember, a group of Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School students researched, raised funds and will help dedicate the memorial. Residents assisted in this effort by supporting the Melrose Veterans Open, the Chili Chowder Fest, several Liberty Bell Fundraisers, the annual MVMMS raffle calendar and various private donations from veterans and supporters around the city

* The Melrose Veterans Advisory Board and the Melrose Veterans Memory Project volunteered time, money and love to ensure the accuracy of the stone, the picture quality and the meaning behind the memorial

* John Gately, who has personal connections to Korean War veterans, donated the inscription and engraving costs

* The Melrose DPW worked tirelessly to place, enhance and beautify the area surrounding the monument

* The City of Melrose raised the additional funds necessary to complete the project

* Rock of Ages completed the monument work

* John Gregario, a local contractor, found and donated the pavers which lead up to the monument

And countless more! A tremendous effort with a beautiful result.

This week Melrose held its Spring Veteran Town Hall meeting to discuss coming Memorial Day 2015 events including the dedication of the new Korean War monument.

Massachusetts Secretary of Veteran Services Francisco Urena was on hand for the meeting, telling the dozens of veterans gathered that he supports having veteran services officers in each community because they are able to address the local needs of a community's veterans. He also answered questions before and after the meeting about the direction of his administration.

Melrose Air Force veteran David Mahoney was also honored as part of Melrose Veteran Services ongoing Veterans of the Year program. Mahoney dedicates countless hours to the city assisting with the Welcome Home Banner, driving veterans to VA appointments and serving as a go-to veteran for local events and programs.

The night concluded with a discussion about holding a special ceremony prior to the Memorial Day Parade on Sunday May 24th. The ceremony will feature Korean War veterans and members of Operation Remember as we pay tribute to the "Forgotten War."

A lively discussion included a vote about the location of the new Korean War monument. Although many locations in Melrose would be an excellent spot for the beautiful stone, town hall veterans chose the Knoll as the best landing spot. It will serve as an additional piece in the ongoing restoration of one of the city's most sacred pieces of land.

Melrose Veteran Services in conjunction with the Melrose Veterans Advisory Board will continue to host semi-annual town hall meetings to help set the direction of veteran benefit delivery and programming. The next town hall meeting is schedule for October in anticipation of the Veterans Day holiday.

The Melrose Veterans Advisory Board will host a food drive to assist local food pantries in time for the holiday season at Shaw's Supermarket on Essex Street. The drive is coupled with National Prisoner of War and Missing in Action Recognition Day and highlights the need to remember all of our veteran populations to include those who are missing and those who go without food.

Many area veterans frequent Melrose food pantries to supplement their nutritional needs. Donations directly stock food pantry shelves for immediate distribution within the surrounding communities. Volunteers will man stations outside of the supermarket and signage inside and out will direct customers to the most needed items in order to maximize the drive's impact.

The Saugus Veterans Council is the driving force behind the Veterans Day and Memorial Day parades in the patriotic town of Saugus. The Saugus Memorial Day parade, a signature town event, is scheduled to kick off Saturday, May 23rd at 9 a.m. The parade, running from Jackson Street to Saugus Town Center features two stops at Riverside Cemetery and Saugus Town Hall for special ceremonies honoring Saugus service and sacrifice.

This year's parade Grand Marshall is Medal of Honor recipient Thomas Hudner, a Massachusetts hero who received the first Medal of Honor awarded for the Korean War. Dan Clark, the "Singing Trooper," will provide patriotic entertainment for the gathered crown at Saugus Town Hall.

The annual Melrose Memorial Day Parade is sponsored by the City and organized by a collection of volunteers to include the Melrose Parade Committee, the Melrose Veterans Advisory Board and local veteran organizations. The parade is scheduled to kick off Sunday, May 25th at 1:30 p.m. and runs from Memorial Hall on Main Street to the closing ceremonies at Wyoming Cemetery. Residents are welcome to line the streets and wave American flags for the many veterans, bands and military organizations that make up the tribute.

This year's theme is honoring the Civil War. The parade's Grand Marshall is the family of Cornelius Casey, a Melrose Civil War veteran. The parade starts at Memorial Hall, the city's largest Civil War monument where a flag display is currently honoring the 620,000 men who perished to preserve the Union. The parade runs from restored monument to restored monument, highlighting the return of the copper wreath on Memorial Hall to the restored Grand Army of the Republic Memorial in Wyoming Cemetery. Eagle Scout candidate Jonathon Havey worked hard to restore the GAR monument and funds for the projects came from middle school students in the Operation Gettysburg Club. The keynote speaker at the parade's closing ceremony is Vietnam Veteran Jim Muschett, Bronze Star with Valor recipient and Operation Gettysburg alumni.

The hardworking members of the Wakefield American Legion once again organized the annual Wakefield Memorial Day Parade scheduled for Monday, May 26th at 1 p.m. Members of the legion will join community groups and march down Main Street from the Galvin Middle School to the WWII monument on the Veterans Memorial Common for a special Memorial Day Ceremony.

The keynote speaker is Vietnam Veteran Thomas Lyons, a central figure in Massachusetts veteran advocacy efforts for his decades of service in dozens of veteran organizations and commissions to include Deputy Commissions of Boston Veteran Services, the Executive Director of the New England Center for Homeless Veterans and the Governor's Veterans Advisory Council. Mr. Lyons is also a member of the Wakefield Veterans Advisory Board and is central in many projects honoring the Wakefield veteran population.

The journey to Gettysburg is still one day away, but the 14 middle school students of the Operation Gettysburg Club began their trip Tuesday when they took a field trip to see local history.

Invited by State Senator Thomas McGee, the club visited the Grand Army of the Republic Museum in Lynn, learning about local Civil War history and seeing the beautiful room where more than 2000 Union soldiers from around New England gathered for decades to take care of their own financially and advocate for veteran policy.

The museum is definitely worth seeing, home to priceless civil war artifacts to include original uniforms, a flag that flew over the Confederate capital in Richmond and the original GAR meeting room home to more than 1200 tin pictures of union veterans. The Lynn Sons of Union Veterans narrated the museums history.

Next the group headed to Wyoming Cemetery in Melrose, home to a large collection of original Civil War monuments. Part of the more than $12,000 these students fundraised helped restore the original dignity of these monuments and add highlights that draw public attention to national recognized memorials.

Armed with a "Melrose Remembers" wreath, the group visited the GAR monument, established by the Melrose GAR post, a sister group to the organization that established the Lynn museum. The GAR monument is located in the center of the Melrose "Soldier's Lot," the final resting place of dozens of Melrose Union soldiers.

The Francis Snow Hesseltine grave served as the second "remember" site. This memorial is a replica of the Medal of Honor, created to pay tribute to Hesseltine who earned the nation's highest award for heroism while commanding during a Civil War engagement in Texas. The Operation Gettysburg club helped pay for the restoration of this monument, removing old decay and moss and restoring the original beauty and dignity bestowed on the final resting place of Melrose's lone Medal of Honor soldier.

And the highlight of the day, a visit to the LTC Clark Baldwin grave, home to a monument dedicated to the First Massachusetts Regiment. This is highly decorated unit honored with its own stone at Gettysburg for battlefield heroism. This grave is a copy of a monument found on the National Battlefield and was cleaned and restored as part of the club's fundraising. To honor history both local and national, the club laid a wreath at this monument and will bring the same wreath to lay during a special ceremony at the national monument on Friday afternoon.

On Thursday, the middle school students will join the rest of Operation Gettysburg - 22 veterans who will join the group on a journey to Philadelphia, Gettysburg and West Point to prove Melrose will never forget its heroes.

For almost a full calendar year, 14 eighth-graders from the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School researched Melrose's role in the Civil War, focusing on Gettysburg and learning about the great sacrifice of the war between the states. Meeting weekly, the students absorbed several themes:

1.) Civil War veterans were once "those soldiers returning from war," similar to the soldier faces they see coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq and living in our community as veterans from the WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Cold War and Persian Gulf eras. No matter the service era, we should never forget.

2.) Civil War monuments, once a focal point of living groups of veterans and a symbol of their willingness to serve and the heroes we lost, face disrepair over time as memories fade. It is up to the residents of Melrose, in conjunction with the City and local veteran service organizations, to make sure these monuments retain their original honor. No matter the installation date, we should never forget.

3.) There is a connection between the names of the soldiers from the Civil War they researched and the names of the veterans they interviewed who are attending the trip. A veteran is a veteran and by researching one, they are in a way researching all. Their work is helping us to not forget.

Armed with these themes, the students of Operation Gettysburg will join 20 veterans and travel to the Gettysburg National Battlefield on May 8-10. They will lay wreaths at key monuments connected to Melrose, honor the past by presenting their research and they will memorialize the present by recording the history of today's veterans.

It's an exciting week as we look forward to the trip and we start the restoration projects forming a key part of the Operation Gettysburg Club experience. The Operation Gettysburg Club raised more than $10000 to defer trip costs (for first-time veterans only) and pay for the restoration projects. Here are the projects already underway:

1.) Restoring the missing copper wreath on Memorial Hall (Main Street)

2.) Upgrade the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial (Wyoming Cemetery)

3.) Clean and Restore the Hesseltine Medal of Honor monument (Wyoming Cemetery)

4.) Lift and straighten the graves of Civil War veterans (Wyoming Cemetery)

5.) Highlight and clean the Baldwin Memorial (Wyoming Cemetery)

We plan to update the community as our trip progress (via Twitter @melroseVSO) and bring back pictures and stories to thank the community for their donations, volunteerism and support.

And once the trip is in the history books, we will continue to honor the Civil War in the upcoming 2014 Melrose Memorial Day Events. Our parade will march from the upgrade at Memorial Hall to the upgrades at Wyoming cemetery in addition to having the decedents of a Melrose Civil War veteran serve as our Grand Marshall. 

It's a simple, but important mission - we will never forget.

The Melrose Veterans Advisory Board meets the third Tuesday of every month and is charged with advising the Mayor and town officials about city issues pertaining to Melrose veterans. After a two month battle with snowstorms, the board was back in action last night addressing its laundry list of veteran projects. Here are some of the highlights:

1.) Vietnam Veteran Bill Forbes and Army Veteran Charles Pina will formally join the advisory board Thursday evening at 7:40 p.m. as Mayor Dolan announces these appointments to the Board of Alderman.

2.) Veteran Monument Restoration Projects - the board is involved with two large projects this spring, a continuation of the WWI Veterans Memorial (Knoll) Restoration and the restoration of various Civil War Monuments (GAR Memorial in Wyoming Cemetery and Memorial Hall) as part of Operation Gettysburg.

3.) FY2015 Veteran Services Budget - the board supports my recommendations for next year's expenditures, which will be presented to the Board of Alderman next month.

4.) Discussion of Women's Veteran Monument - the board is preparing a proposal for installing a monument honoring our female veterans in time for Veteran's Day 2014.

5.) Updates were also provided on the Melrose Veterans Memory Project and our ongoing project to document all Melrose Veterans Memorials of virtual archiving. Both projects reach out into the entire community and involve the schools and local volunteers.

6.) Memorial Day - plans for the 2014 Memorial Day observances are well under way with three bands, three honor guards and host of local organizations agreeing to participate in the parade. The board debated their annual Grand Marshall selection and devised strategy to incorporate honoring our Civil War history in the weekend's plans. More updates to come soon on the Memorial Day weekend.