The original GAR memorial has been rededicated to all local veterans All Veterans Memorials
Crystal Township, Montcalm County
"In memory of our dead comrades"
Original Civil War memorial - Placed circa 1920
"In honor of all those who served in the armed forces of The United States of America"
Rededicated 1999
Spending a lifetime in your home town brings veterans together in bonds of respect for each others service. When I walk through the township burial grounds I recall so many old family friends, many of them were veterans of WW I, WW II, and Korea, and my own schoolmates that served during VietNam and the Gulf conflicts.
Rededicating older memorials to honor all of us is certainly appropriate and further tightens those bonds of friendship and service. The men in this photograph were essentially, the founding fathers of my hometown. They served as teamsters, clerks, cooks, and infantrymen. My grandmother and my mother knew these old gentlemen as the kindly old fellas of the town, most of them living with their children and grand-children on old age pensions.
For me the gentlemen are curiosities of history, but with a significant difference, a few of them are related to me. They are my ancestry, my heritage. Several of the others are the grandfathers of my classmates and life long friends. In this regard the bonds of comradeship are generational, extending far beyond the last surrender and armistice.
