After town approval of $86K more, Mashpee Veterans War Memorial moves forward

MASHPEE — After the town approved an additional $86,000 for the Mashpee Veterans' War Memorial construction, Richard DeSorgher said plans for an all-granite monument can move forward.

The Veterans' War Memorial, at the Mashpee Community Park, will feature a monument with the names of more than 250 Mashpee veterans who fought in American wars from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam.

The community park is across from Town Hall, at the corner of Main Street and Great Neck Road North.

The war memorial area in the community park is currently comprised of the Veterans Garden with honor stones, flags, a walkway and lighting.

Roughly 85% of the people who will be listed on the monument were members of the Wampanoag Tribe, said DeSorgher, a Mashpee resident and member of Mashpee Historical Commission.

DeSorgher launched the project in 2020, along with the historical commission and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s Enrollment Department. But after the committee reassessed the materials needed to build the monument the project stalled, DeSorgher said.

“Originally, we tried to save some money with a cement foundation and granite slabs over it,” he said. “That would have been much cheaper. But we were advised that if we do it in granite, it will last forever.”

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In 2019, at a Mashpee special town meeting, residents voted to allocate $285,000 to fund the memorial. A grant was also approved by the Secretary of the Commonwealth's Office for $15,000. But after the blip in cost estimates, the town, again, unanimously voted on May 2 to provide additional funding to build the memorial's monument.

Since then, Baker Monument, Co. in Falmouth has been hired to erect the monument, which DeSorgher said should be done in time for Veterans Day in November.

Because the project will now incorporate more granite, the design can support the monument to be built in the shape of a wave to represent Cape Cod, said DeSorgher.

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“We didn’t want it to look like a tomb stone,” he said. “We wanted it to be a symbol of Mashpee, and show its ties to the ocean.”

Once completed, the monument's face will also feature medallions listing six branches of the service, including the merchant marines, DeSorgher said.

“Many of those from Mashpee, because of their ties to the sea, went into the merchant marines as well,” he said.

The delay in construction allows for the new Mashpee town seal, which was also approved at town meeting, to be engraved on the monument.

“In hindsight, it was a good thing that we got delayed,” DeSorgher said. “Because now, we can put the new seal in the center of the monument facing Main Street.”

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Intentionally, space on the monument was reserved for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe to include a symbol or design of their choice, DeSorgher said. In addition, a panel will also be installed at the end of the monument, which will note those from Mashpee who served during times of peace.

Most of the memorial completed

As it stands now, 90% of the memorial is complete, said DeSorgher. Twenty-five honor stones were installed within the Veterans Garden in memory of those who fought and died in wars between the Revolutionary War and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

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Organizers also installed a state flag and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s flag to accompany the already existing American flag, DeSorgher said.

“We added the Wampanoag flag for the first time in that park, and that’s because 90% of those that fought in the Revolutionary War were Wampanoag,” he said. “And all 13 that died (in the Revolutionary War) were Wampanoag.”

DeSorgher said lighting has also been added, and a walkway connecting the Veterans Garden to the honor stones, and the monument itself once it's built.

Tribal elders contribute vital evidence to project

Although it was DeSorgher's idea to erect the monument, he collaborated with tribal elders including Earl Mills, a Mashpee resident.

The process surrounding all components of the memorial has been special for Mills, who became the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe's traditional chief in 1956.

"This project is a way to remember people who fought in the wars and who got killed in the wars," he said. "Many of those people were Wampanoag people. They went to war and came back and they were treated worse than when they left. That's the other reason this project is important."

Mills, former owner of The Flume restaurant in Mashpee, which is now the Naukabout Brewery, said he was a combat engineer in 1948 and 1949 in Korea. But his name won't be listed, he said, because the Korean War didn't officially begin until 1950.

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"I was getting things ready so Americans could go help the South Koreans," he said.

Mills, who can trace his Wampanoag roots back to the 1600s, said he became involved with the project because it offered residents an opportunity to honor Mashpee as an "Indian community."

"You come into town and there's nothing Indian that you can see," he said. "People that were fighting in these wars — 85% were Indians. It's important that becomes in evidence."

Genealogy and ancestry components make their way to the monument

As part of the memorial project, Rita Lopez, genealogist and tribal enrollment director for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, helped DeSorgher compile and document veteran information for the monument. In order for the names to be engraved, she said, individuals must have enlisted from Mashpee or have lived in the town during the time of war.

Part of the process, Lopez said, was identifying "true Mashpee residents," who were not accused of desertion in any way. It was especially difficult, she said, to find documentation for those who served in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

"It was a lot of backtracking in a sense. You have to search a lot of libraries and historical sites," she said. "It gets easier, of course, as time goes on. Information is better documented in wars that occurred closer to our time."

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Over time, she found herself combing through Massachusetts state records and through historic and ancestral paperwork to match names on the list to the wars they fought in.

"You have to have the documentation, like in any historical or ancestral research project, to back up your claims," Lopez said.

In one instance, Lopez was researching an English missionary by the name of Gideon Holly. He was sent to the Cape by a religious organization called the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Holly often wrote letters back to England providing updates on Mashpee, in particular. In one of the letters, which was transcribed for Lopez by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Holly spoke about a name on the monument's list and specifically said the person died at war.

"Things like that are vital to verifying this type of information," she said. "Someone actually writing it in the 1700s, really validated this person was legitimately part of a war."

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When Lopez finds relatives and understands what they did, it's a good feeling, she said.

"It's satisfying in some ways, but sad in another," Lopez said. "We lost someone. And, in some cases, you don't know where that person went to."

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Although the bulk of names that will be engraved on the monument are tribal members, she said the list would have been longer if she could verify some of the desertion situations listed on paperwork. During the earlier wars, Lopez said, Wampanoag people were displaced from their homelands and fighting off diseases. Tribal members were also forced to abide by rules they had never lived by before, she said, and many men were taken away to fight. They just wanted to go home to Mashpee and take care of their families, she said.

"Maybe they disserted, maybe they didn't. But can you imagine not having a choice about going to fight for people who had already taken over your homeland," Lopez said. "Their sacrifice was often tied to fighting off even more colonists who wanted to take over more and more. You fight for what you know at the time."

Project growth

It was the research of Lopez and DeSorgher that supported the growth of the project, said Ava Costello, chair of the Mashpee Historical Commission. What began as a small memorial behind the Veterans Garden became much more after seeing the documentation of the many Wampanoag men who served.

"We thought this is just amazing. This is something people really need to know," Costello said.

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Soon after the project's inception, Costello said the number of people they wanted to recognize doubled, and the committee began taking a look at history more closely.

"It's individual people's lives that impacts society. This project only grew because of the desire to recognize those from a small, New England, Wampanoag town," she said. "And the lives that were impacted by war and continue to be."

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Town approves $86K more, Mashpee Veterans War Memorial moving ahead