Out & About: Hartford volunteers aim to honor post-World War II veterans with new monument

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — The Hartford Monument Committee is asking members of the public to submit names of veterans to be added to a new monument to honor those who served in Korea, Vietnam and after 1975.

“We’re being very careful to make sure that people understand this is not just for people who were in one of those wars, like Vietnam or Korea …,” said committee member Mary Kay Brown. “If they were signed up or in from 1946 to now, we want to honor that on the monument.”

People must have entered the military as a Hartford resident or lived in Hartford during or after their service for at least 30 years to be included on the monument. The goal is to have the monument installed in spring 2026 and officially dedicated on Memorial Day, Brown said.

It will be 40 feet from the town’s World War I and World War II monument, which was installed in May 2024. The town’s previous World War I and II monuments were destroyed decades ago and a group of residents formed a committee to redo them.

The new monument, which will sit in Veterans Park in downtown White River Junction, will be around 8-feet tall and in the same style as the one installed in 2024: granite with bronze plaques on both sides listing veterans names.

“That park is a pretty popular park,” Brown said, adding that she regularly sees people stopping to look at the names of the World War I and II veterans. “There’s always people walking through there.”

The committee is close to raising $30,000 by Aug. 31 to put toward the total project cost of $71,000 for the new monument, Brown said.

The Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation has provided the majority of the funding through a $25,000 grant, Brown said. People also will be able to purchase commemorative bricks with loved ones’ names that will be installed around the monument.

Finding — and verifying — who should be on the monument has proved challenging, said Linda Miller, who has taken on the task for the committee. Miller, who also confirmed the names for the World I and II monument, described this time around as “twice as hard.”

So far, the committee has compiled 281 names of Hartford residents who served in the Korea era and 411 who served in the Vietnam era.

The names that have been the most challenging to find are those who joined after the draft had been abolished and the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Miller said.

When she reached out to Vermont’s Office of Veterans Affairs for a list of Hartford residents who served after 1975, she got a list of 20 veterans. Among the names left off the list were two committee members — including Brown’s husband, Dennis — who are veterans and longtime Hartford residents.

“It just boggles,” Miller said.

Since last fall, Miller has compiled a list of her own, primarily using old Hartford High School yearbooks on Ancestry.com, along with the Valley News’ archives on newspapers.com that list high school graduates. Miller’s honed in on people who listed military service as part of their future plans. At the same time, the group has posted to social media and added a notice in the Hartford Alumni Association’s newsletter asking for names.

“When you’re a 17-year-old student and (you’re asked) ‘What are your future plans?’ and you say ‘I’m going to join the Navy,’ you don’t know” for certain and plans may change, Miller said.

There are currently 148 people who served after 1975 on Miller’s list, which includes the 20 provided by the Vermont Office of Veterans Affairs. She’s been able to verify 12 more, bringing her total confirmed names of post-1975 veterans to 32.

“One of them is my own nephew and I know he just got out of the Navy,” Miller said.

Miller sent her list to the Office of Veterans Affairs where staff are slowly trying to verify the names.

The incomplete list from the veterans affairs office wasn’t a surprise to Robert Burke, the office’s director. When veterans leave the service, their discharge papers are typically sent to state in the address they provide, which could be different than the state they signed up in.

“Even if they signed up in Vermont, but they were discharged and gave a current address (in another state) … then (the discharge papers) would go to that state,” Burke said about how Vermont tracks who served.

For example, if someone lived in Hartford then moved to California after leaving the military then later returned to Vermont “chances are I don’t have that discharge,” he said.

If veterans wish to get a veteran’s designation on their driver’s license, they provide the office with a copy of their discharge papers.

“For anybody else, somebody moving here, if they want to get a designation on a driver’s license … they produce that for us and we keep it on file for them.”

If someone is killed in action, the department will eventually get a casualty notice, which are also all filed as paper copies. The Vermont National Guard also published books listing Vermonters who served in Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War, which the Vermont Office of Veterans Affairs can access.

“Even with those books, they’re put together by humans so nothing is perfect,” Burke said.

While the paper copies of the discharge papers prior to 1990 were scanned into a searchable digital database years ago, the same has yet to be done for those in the last three decades, Burke said. In the last five years, each individual branch of service has started sending over digitized discharge papers.

During a Monday afternoon phone interview, Burke was in the process of looking through the files to match the names on Miller’s list.

“It’s not a quick process,” Burke said. “It’s a little labor intensive so we’ve been trying to chip away at it as we’ve had time.”

So far, he’s been able to match a handful of the 100-plus names on the list. People might have enlisted in a different Vermont town and been discharged, then moved to Hartford in later years, which is why they likely wouldn’t have shown up on the initial list the office provided to Miller.

“Being more of a portable society, you went away to World War II or World War I certainly, even Korea, you came home and you settled back in your hometown and you never left,” Burke said. “That started to change more after Vietnam … and certainly in the past 40 years.”

There’s also a chance someone who joined the military in the mid-aughts is still serving, so the state would not have the paperwork. He lauded Miller and the other volunteers for the hours they are dedicating to honoring veterans.

“It’s great work. It’s very hard work. It’s time consuming,” Burke said. “I don’t think it’s well recognized enough, unfortunately.”

There will be space on the plaques to add additional names after the new monument is installed. Members of the Hartford Monument Committee are determined to do all they can to make it as complete as possible before then.

“You don’t want to put names of people on the monument that shouldn’t be on and you certainly don’t want to forget anybody,” Miller said. “Freedom isn’t free. Somebody was willing to give their life so I feel like they ought to be at least recognized for their service.”

Those who have a name they think should be added to the monument can email the committee at ww1monument@gmail.com. Those interested in purchasing a fundraising brick to be installed around the monument can visit www.fundraisingbrick.com/hmp/. Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.