Dedication to be held for new Veterans War Memorial Park in Coraopolis

The newly constructed Veterans War Memorial Park will be able to have a proper dedication on Memorial Day after being canceled last year because of covid.

Members and officers of the Keith-Holmes VFW Post 402 will lead the dedication from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 31 at 412 Mulberry St. in Coraopolis.

Jim Kest, a trustee of Post 402, said he is excited about the dedication.

“We are excited to get people out there to see it,” he said.

A parade is normally scheduled before a dedication, but the idea was scrapped because of the amount of planning and uncertainty of implementing it.

“We were disappointed,” Kest said.

Discussion of a new monument began after the previous memorial needed repairs and updates as it honored only veterans up to the Vietnam War. The costs to fix the monument were expensive, so the post decided it was better to build a new one, according to Mike Blair, commander of Post 402.

“We had everybody at the post in the meetings come up with design ideas,” he said. “We went through them and picked the one everyone agreed on.”

The bronze doughboy that has stood in front of the Post since 2008 was also refurbished, Blair said.

With the help of Coraopolis Post 402, which was recently combined with Sewickley VFW Post 5756, funds were raised through the sale of commemorative bricks and from various donors, Kest said. Money from the sale of the Sewickley Post 5756 building was also used for the project.

Kest said the project took an estimated $75,000 to complete from spring 2019 to the end of that year.

The new Veterans War Memorial Park honors veterans from all six service branches who fought in wars from World War I to the War on Terror, Kest said.

“We just wanted to have some kind of recognition for all the guys out there that had conflicts,” Kest said.

Blair hopes everyone enjoys the moment after planning the dedication for almost a year.

“We hope everybody comes to look at it and has an appreciation for the sacrifice made by those on the monument,” he said.