Norwood Veterans to Be Honored on Banners

Last month, the Norwood Board of Selectmen approved a new Veterans banner project, which was proposed by Veterans Services Officer Derek Wennerstrand. Community members and residents can honor local veterans with banners, which will be displayed on light poles around the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Memorial Park (located on Walpole Street/Route 1A.) Wennerstrand explained that he chose the park because it offers a centralized, visible space for the banners. Wennerstrand hopes to revitalize the DAV Memorial Park with this veteran tribute.

“When I first took this job a year and a half ago, doing the banner program was one of the first things that I put on my radar,” explained Wennerstrand. Last spring, he started looking into this project, researching multiple military banner organizations. He noted that he was inspired by the many towns surrounding Norwood that have established veteran banner programs.

All of the Selectmen expressed strong support and enthusiasm for this veterans’ project. Selectman Michael Saad remarked that the project is very meaningful to him, and that he has been contacted by many local veterans expressing interest in the banners. Selectmen Vice Chair Amanda Grow said she appreciates that this banner program allows the community to honor specific individuals by putting faces to the names of people from the community who served.

Norwood has a proud legacy of honoring its local heroes. Over a century ago, Maude Hartwell, then president of the Norwood Woman’s Club, made the motion to construct a memorial building that would honor WWI veterans. This was the first motion made by a woman in a Norwood town meeting and set in motion the creation of the Norwood Town Hall, which was dedicated on Armistice Day in 1928. In 2002, four more plaques were added inside Memorial Hall, honoring 101 Norwood Veterans who died in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War. Wennerstrand plans to refurbish the Memorial Hall plaques in the near future.

There are several monuments in Aaron Guild Park that honor service members, including a Marine Corps statue and a bench honoring those who served in the Korean War. Over 5,000 veterans are buried at Highland Cemetery, which is also home to a bronze memorial remembering Norwood’s WWI veterans. In 1896, a “condemned cannon with cannonballs” was donated to the cemetery as a monument to the South Dedham (present-day Norwood) soldiers who died in the Civil War. A Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 2022 at the Sansone Memorial Park.

“Norwood has a lot of monuments dedicated to veterans, but not many individual memorials. I thought it would be nice to bring a newer project in,” Wennerstrand stated.

Norwood has been home to many notable veterans from recent and distant history. Major Aaron Guild responded to the Lexington alarm in April 1775, leaving his plow and oxen to join the fight against British troops. He is featured on Norwood’s town seal, and Guild Square is named in his honor. There is a memorial marker where Guild’s farm once stood in front of the Morrill Memorial Library.

Air Force Col. George Lee was born in Norwood in 1919. Known as “Iron Man,” he was a WWII hero who set the European Theater of Operations record with 258 combat missions. Lee was promoted to the rank of Full Colonel at the age of 25, making him one of the youngest Colonels in Air Force history.

In 1954, Lee’s life was cut short when his plane crashed in a storm while on a routine flight from Grandview Air Force Base in Missouri. The Nahatan Street bridge, now known as the George Lee Memorial Bridge, was dedicated in his honor in 1988. Lee is also featured in a small WWII museum in northeastern France, where he was stationed near the end of the war.

Among the 661 Norwood men who served in WWI, 13 lost their lives in service. Pvt. Bert Windahl, who served in the 28th Infantry, was the first Norwood resident to be KIA during the war in 1918. He was laid to rest in an American cemetery in Picardie, France, alongside over 6,000 other Americans who lost their lives in the area.

Richard Murphy was the son of the Town’s police chief and born into a large, close-knit family in Norwood. He loved baseball and was a big fan of the Red Sox. Murphy left for Vietnam two months after being sworn into the U.S. Marine Corps, and was tragically killed in Quang Tri in 1968. He was 20 years old. To learn more about Murphy’s legacy through vvmf.org, visit bit.ly/4qBq4B2.

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The banner program is open to current service members and veterans from Norwood, including those who were killed in action, missing in action, or who passed away during training or after service. To be eligible, a veteran must have entered the military using a Norwood address and not been dishonorably discharged, including those who grew up in Norwood but now live elsewhere. The banners will feature the veteran’s name, branch of service, photo, conflicts served in, and awards. It can also include an optional message from family or sponsors.

Each banner costs $100. Community members who are interested can apply through militarytributebanners.org/massachusetts/norwood-ma.html. Application assistance is available at the VSO Office in Town Hall, where a laptop can be provided. For more information or questions regarding the banner program, contact Wennerstrand at 781-384-9307 or dwennerstrand@norwoodma.gov.

Wennerstrand plans to order 24 banners. “My hope is that in the following years, we will be able to expand this program out to other parks and streets in town,” he explained. He also discussed the possibility of digitizing the banners in the future and making them available online for the entire community to view.

The veteran banner debut is currently being planned for May 24 or May 25 (Memorial Day Weekend.) They will remain up through Veterans Day, subject to change.