IN MEMORIAM. It was a day to honor those the town has lost in the nation's wars, and for many, it provided the first opportunity to take notice of York's Vietnam War Memorial, which has stood for many years across from Town Hall on York Street. However, with the recent building and site design of Old York's Remick Barn, this monument has been brought to the forefront, and many passersby commented on the beauty of the memorial during the parade. Though for Susan Young Major and her son, Grant Major, who is currently awaiting his first deployment to Iraq, this carved testament to those who served in Vietnam is very well known. Both are pictured here standing in front of the monument upon which is carved the name of Susan's brother, Robert B. Young, who died in the Vietnam War.
Photos by Tori Rasche
You can see it quite clearly now, standing out as it does against its new background, no longer hidden in the roadside brush. The four flags placed in the ground out in front over the holiday weekend bring your eyes to it even more. No longer an obscure, dark slab in the shadows; now a memorial in an appropriate place, just off the sidewalk in the center of town, taking only a stop and a turn for us to reflect upon the loss of the people and the times they lived and died in.
There were four of them taken from their families in York during that war. Gerald A. Dorr, age 22; Larry A. d'Entremont, age 19; Ronald A. Parsons, age 23, and Robert B. Young, age 20. Parsons and d'Entremont, both members of the 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade, lost their lives barely a month apart in the winter of 1967, both on an objective that few people remember now, a place known only as Hill 875.
Four young men from a small town in a small state. Their lives and their sacrifices could all too easily be forgotten as our times move on. And yet they are not. Collectively, we refuse to let that happen. Perhaps, somewhere in the midst of our refusal to forget these men, there may yet linger some greater hope for us even still.
The Vietnam War Memorial. Out now in the sun, just off York Street, in the middle of your town.
