Managing Memory - One Neighborhood at a Time

The monument stood mute in front of the community’s public library, its bronze message gone, stolen by vandals decades ago. It had to be important, we thought, a boulder this massive with a large chiseled bed?

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It had to have proclaimed something, once upon a time . . . but what?

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The only hint that remained were three cannon balls atop the boulder.

Source: Photograph by Ken Finkel, 2013.

Having grown up nearby in Mount Airy, one of Philadelphia’s many neighborhoods, I had always been aware of the boulder and the building behind it, Lovett Memorial Library. In 2013, when I came across a photograph from the 1920s of the boulder with the plaque at Phillyhistory.org, I decided to write about it.

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And did, here.

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Two years later, the blank boulder was discovered and documented by the World War I Memorial Inventory Project which initiated restoration with the Friends of the Lovett Memorial Library.

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On Memorial Day weekend in 1924 the community had gathered to dedicate the boulder, brought from from Valley Forge. They sang “America,” offered prayers and gave speeches. The 20-by-30-inch bronze plaque would assure public memory in perpetuity, a gesture for the families of the 35 local soldiers lost in the “Great War.” (In all, Philadelphia’s casualties numbered 1,448. The list of American losses stood at 116,516.)

Managing memory one neighborhood at a time must have helped the public handle such massive loss.

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The sixth name listed was that of Mortimer P. Crane, whose parents lived not far away at 6440 Greene Street. Crane worked at his father’s mining company before enlisting. On May 15, 1918, while flying in formation over England not far from Stonehenge, Crane clipped another airplane, lost part of his own wing, and crashed. He died instantly of a fractured neck.

The other names of casualties listed:

Stanley H. Berry; Albert R. Bolay; John Breidenfield; George M. Brooks; Anthony Cimino; George A. Dawson; Herbert K. Dewees; James Duffy; Thomas B. Durrick; Frank C. Erb; George William Esher; Jacques A. Fiechter; Edward Fisher; William Fleming, Jr.; Earl S. Horsey; Charles Joseph Houston; Clement Cresson Kite; Harrison Knox; Harry Linaka; Edward Joseph Malone; Robert Joseph McCamman; William J. Merkle; Ralph Thurman Mills; Clark B. Nichol; John Potts; Alfred L. Quintaro; Herman P. Saylor; George P. Shepherdson; Harold J. Sheppard; William Sibel; Gerald G. Speck; George G. Whitson; and Jacob Zaun III.

The long-gone plaque also told of “MARCIA MAXWELL BARTLE, U.S.M.C., FIRST WOMAN TO ENLIST IN PHILADELPHIA.” Bartle’s skills as an experienced switchboard operator were essential to the war effort.

Recently, as part of a $31 million renovation and expansion of the Lovett Library in December 2017, the missing plaque was finally replaced.

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Bayard Fiechter (far right), whose great uncle Jacques A. Fiechter is listed on the plaque, was present for the re-dedication. Others involved (from left to right) include: Barry Johnson, volunteer, Pennsylvania World War One Centennial Committee; Irv Miller, Treasurer, Friends of Lovett memorial Library; and David T. Moore, President, Friends of Lovett Memorial Library.

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