Donations sought to fix more damage found at Harrison veterans memorial
Efforts to restore Harrison Township’s Honor Roll memorial are being impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and the discovery of additional damage.
The 75-year-old stone memorial at Freeport and Springhill roads bore the names of nearly 2,000 World War II veterans painted in gold on black glass panels. Work to shore up its crumbling structure was completed before winter last year, and its glass panels will be replaced with granite ones with the names etched into them.
More stone damage was found when the glass panels were recently removed, said Eric Bengel, a member of the memorial’s restoration committee.
Committee member Bill Rudolph said more cracks were found in the memorial’s block work.
“The upper parts of each panel have a lot of damage that will have to be filled in,” he said. The repairs are estimated to cost about $1,400.
“The repair work will only take a day or two to complete and has to be finished before the new panels go in,” he said.
Donations to the effort are down because of the covid-19 pandemic, Bengel said.
“We need the community’s help. Although the granite has been ordered, we are still in need of funds to install the granite and to finish all of the stonework,” he said. “We are asking the community for a final push of contributions to put us back on track.”
Contributions to the Harrison Township Honor Roll are being accepted at KeyBank.
Banners honoring veterans also are being sold to support the restoration effort. Rudolph said 106 of the 151 available have been sold.
The committee had been planning to complete the memorial by Memorial Day, but the pandemic will delay it.
Steve Aaron, owner of Clarion Monuments, informed the committee that the granite panels were in production in India when the nation was shut down.
“This means they are held up in India waiting for the manufacturing plants to start back up again,” Aaron said in an email. “As you know this situation seems to change daily, but the manufacturer said their best estimate of arrival at this point, if they had to give one, would be late July.”
The committee sought to add any names missing from the memorial and to correct misspellings. A list of all names on the memorial is available online.
For more information, harrisontwp.honorroll@gmail.com.
Brian C. Rittmeyer, a Pittsburgh native and graduate of Penn State University's Schreyer Honors College, has been with the Trib since December 2000. He can be reached at brittmeyer@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.