ACKNOWLEDGING VETERANS DAY AT GREEN HILL'S MEMORIAL GROVE
The City of Worcester will unveil the Memorial Grove at Green Hill Park on Veterans day Wednesday, November 11th, 2020.
As part of a Veterans Day Ceremony that will be closed to the general public but ‘broadcast live’, the City of Worcester will host a speaking program followed by a laying of wreaths, ribbon cutting, firing detail, and the playing of taps.
The Memorial Grove’s ceremony and unveiling is the final stop of the Veterans’ Day procession recognizing Worcester’s War Memorials that will start at Veterans, Inc. at 69 Grove Street at 10:30 AM.
The event was announced to a select mailing list by email via the following invitation:
Dedicated in 1928, the Memorial Grove was constructed by American Legion Post #5, who created a ceremonial place on the eastern slope of Crown Hill in Green Hill Park and planted one tree for each resident of Worcester who lost their life in the Great War, planting hundreds of maple trees in 22 orderly rows.
Overtime many trees died, with fewer than 200 of the original trees remaining standing and all the individual memorial plaques, originally placed beneath each tree, missing.
Photo of the Memorial Grove under construction, from the Green Hill Park Coalition’s website.
The City originally intended to host a rededication of the Memorial Grove on the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I in 2018, but forwent the Centennial Celebration of Armistice Day due to construction delays in the completion of the Grove’s ceremonial center.
The Green Hill Park Coalition and the Worcester Tree Initiative replanted over 100 trees, to restore those that had fallen, and the ceremonial center was redesigned by WPI Associate Professor Steven Van Dessel. The City of Worcester financed the complete reconstruction of the Memorial Grove, including the placement of over 300 twenty-foot tall steel posts, engraved with the names of fallen citizens.
Artist rendering of the Memorial Grove, from the Green Hill Park Coalition’s website.
The United States World War I Centennial Commission and the Pritzker Military Museum and Library designated this memorial as an official World War I Centennial Memorial.
The Green Hill Park Coalition is a non-profit, membership organization dedicated to preserving the remaining acreage of Green Hill Park, to enhancing the park’s natural and cultural resources, and to protecting the park through a conservation restriction.
The completion of the Grove’s restoration is a huge accomplishment by the parks advocates with the Green Hill Park Coalition and an awesome new feature of Worcester’s largest park. Brian McCarthy, President of the Green Hill Park Coalition, has spearheaded the initiative to restore the Grove, starting in 2015.
Worcester parks feature many war memorials, including the Massachusetts Vietnam Veterans Memorial, also at Green Hill Park, the Word War II Memorial in Newton Square at Elm Park, the Korean War Memorial - which actually is its own park, the Civil War ‘Soldiers’ Memorial’, the World War II Memorial and fountain, and the Southwest Asia War Memorial at the Worcester Common, and the Roll of Honor at Lake Park.