Retired Marine Corps Gen. John J. Sheehan ’62 will speak at the Veterans’ Memorial event.
Boston College Veterans’ Memorial and Website to Be Unveiled Nov. 11
University to formally dedicate the Veterans' Memorial at Burns Library
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With next Wednesday’s ceremony to formally dedicate the University’s new Veterans’ Memorial on the Burns Library Lawn, the sweeping 70-foot-long stone wall will become an enduring symbol of remembrance of the 209 Boston College students and alumni who lost their lives while in wartime service to the nation.The two-foot-high serpentine wall, built with stone matching the University’s signature buildings, is capped with polished dark granite etched with the names of Boston College’s 209 war dead – killed in American military conflicts from World War I through Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
The Veterans’ Day memorial dedication ceremony will begin with a 9:30 a.m. Mass in St. Ignatius Church with University President William P. Leahy, SJ, as principal celebrant. He will be joined on the altar by members of the Boston College Jesuit community and alumni priests.
At 10:45 a.m., guests will be seated in a tent on the Burns Library Lawn for the formal dedication of the memorial. This ceremony will
include the ringing of the Gasson Hall bells in tribute to the fallen, a recitation of the names of the 209 alumni war dead, and the lighting of candles by alumni veterans in honor of the deceased from each war.
Retired Marine Corps Gen. John J. Sheehan ’62, the only Boston College graduate to attain four-star flag rank in military service, will give a keynote speech.
“The memorial will mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people,” notes Paul Delaney ’66, co-chair of the University committee charged with developing a permanent tribute to the University’s wartime dead.
“For friends and classmates, we have done our duty to remember them,” says Delaney, a former Army officer who served in Vietnam and for the past several years has helped champion the fund-raising effort to build the memorial. “Families of the deceased will draw a certain amount of pride and satisfaction, because this will ensure that the Boston College community will never forget them.
“And, for the University community – for this generation and for many to come – it is a teaching moment that what these veterans did for all of us and for all that we have will never be forgotten.”
Boston College undergraduates enrolled in Reserve Officer Training Corps programs for the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines will also
participate in the dedication ceremony.
A reception for guests will be held in Gasson 100 immediately after the dedication program.
Members of the University community are invited to attend the events. In addition to dedicating the monument, on Veteran’s Day the University will launch a new website http://veteransmemorial.bc.edu containing information about each alumnus whose name is inscribed on the memorial. There is a page on each veteran, including his name, graduation year, rank, branch of service and any other information that was gathered in the course of conducting research for the memorial.
Reid Oslin can be reached at reid.oslin.1@bc.edu