City officials unveiled to the public last week the conceptual plans for a new World War II Memorial for the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway at Third Street.
The project’s design, by Hoboken architect Dean Marchetto, includes 146 rifles and helmets, each placed bayonet down in a slab of granite representing the 146 Hoboken servicemen who lost their lives in World War II. In between each slab will be actual sand representing the beaches that soldiers stormed on D-Day slightly over 60 years ago.
“Hoboken, like every community, was touched by the loss of war,” said Mayor David Roberts at a June 4 press conference, where the design was shown to the veterans and the public for the first time. “Hoboken deserves a world-class memorial to honor those who gave their lives and to the living veterans who fought in the war.”
Roberts noted that this past Memorial Day, over 140,000 gathered at the National Mall in Washington D.C. to celebrate the opening of the National World War II Memorial. Over 400,000 Americans were killed in World War II, and more Hoboken servicemen died in World War II than World War I, the Korean War, and Vietnam combined.
While planning for the project is still in the preliminary stages, Roberts hopes the presentation of the conceptual design will be the first step in garnering the support of local veterans, elected officials and residents. “Now is the time to honor these brave heroes,” said Roberts. According to Roberts, the proposed monument would be 12 feet by 50 feet and could cost as much as $600,000. The City Council would have to approve the design for the project, and funds to pay for it must still be raised through both public and private avenues, said Roberts.
“The striking design, with a touching depiction of each Hoboken solider killed in the war, would sit in front of the New York City skyline to symbolize the essence of freedom and democracy,” said the mayor. In addition to veterans from the American Legion Post 107, U.S. Rep. Robert Menendez, state Sen. Bernard Kenny, Hudson County Freeholder Maurice Fitzgibbons, six members of the Hoboken City Council, and local business leaders were in attendance.
According to Marchetto, the design was inspired after he saw a similar memorial in Normandy and row after row of grave markers in the U.S. cemetery in France. “When you see it,” said Marchetto, “it makes you realize the magnitude of the sacrifice that was made.”
The proposed design was met with approval from the local veterans who were polled. “I think the design is beautiful,” said Tom Kennedy, commander of the American Legion Post 107 and member of the Memorial Committee. “Not long ago this looked like [this memorial] might have just been a dream, but if we can find the funding, this really is something that could be a reality.”
He added that a World War II memorial is sorely missing from Hoboken and would be welcome addition to the city’s waterfront.
,br> “Sorry is a nation that has no heroes,” said Kennedy, who added that veterans from World War II are dying at a rate of over 1,000 a day, “but even sorrier is a nation that forgets its heroes.”