PLACENTIA : Memorial Leads to Debate Over Names

A memorial to honor war veterans who were born, raised and educated in Placentia is scheduled to be installed next summer, but one member of a committee overseeing the project says it fails to honor all the city’s veterans.

The City Council earlier this month approved preliminary plans for the memorial and allocated $38,000 from the utility tax fund to pay for its design, construction and installation.

The memorial will be installed north of the police station at the City Hall.

Betty Mead, a member of the Veterans Advisory Committee, asked the City Council to consider including all veterans who live or lived in Placentia, not just those who were raised in the city and attended city schools.

“It would seem inappropriate to me that veterans living in Placentia, making Placentia their home, raising their families here . . . aren’t going to be honored,” Mead wrote in a letter to the council. Mead’s late husband, Howard, was a veteran who lived in Placentia for 20 years after his war service. But because he was not raised in the city, his name will not be included in the memorial.

“No other city is going to honor his service to his country,” Mead wrote of her husband. “He lived a considerable part of his life in Placentia. I believe (his name) should be included in a Placentia memorial.”

But City Manager Robert D’Amato said that including the names of any veteran who ever lived in the city would be impossible.

“The list would be endless,” D’Amato said, adding that the Dolphin Fountain at Kraemer Park was dedicated as a memorial to all veterans.

Committee Chairwoman Joan Muir said the city’s decision to limit the new memorial to veterans raised and educated in the city was necessary to keep its cost down.

“We would like to include all veterans who have lived in Placentia, but there is only so much we can do,” Muir said. “It would be impossible to include that many names on a memorial of this size.”

Preliminary plans call for a 24-inch-wide, 58-inch-high white marble panel, flanked by two 42-inch-wide, 54-inch-high black granite panels. The marble panel will be engraved with the names of veterans killed in action, and the granite panels will list all other city veterans. The three panels can accommodate 700 names.

The Veterans Committee has spent the last year and a half gathering names of veterans who meet the criteria. The group has distributed registration cards at various city functions, high school reunions and through veterans organizations. According to Muir, 190 names have been collected.

The group hopes to collect at least another 60 names before ordering the memorial. The purchase price will include the engraving of up to 250 names, but additional names will cost $30 each, Muir said.

Veterans who have served in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines or Coast Guard, who were raised and educated in Placentia and who joined the service from Placentia, are eligible to be named by the memorial.

Registration cards are available at the City Hall, corner of Chapman Avenue and Kraemer Boulevard.