Tonight I am celebrating.

The Park District gave final approval for the memorial to 43 soldiers from Northbrook who died while in service to our country. I am so pleased - they will be remembered!

Groundbreaking on Memorial Day - dedication at Shermerfest. Five years of research = 42 names. Eight hours on Facebook = 43 names!

Jay, I remembered you today as I sat in your school and heard the resounding vote! Rand, you were in my thought too. The 1972 interview your mother gave to the Northbrook Star has stayed with me since I discovered it several years ago. In it, she said, . . . "I think he wanted to be remembered." Now he will be - as will all the others whose names will be on the memorial with him.

These men have been my passion for years - I can still recall the feeling that came over me as I stumbled upon the grave of Philip Arnold in small National Cemetery in Quincy, Illinois and realized that I was most likely the first person from "home" that stood beside his grave and honored him for his service. Wounded at Shiloh in April 1862, he died more than three months later in July while a patient at the hospital in Quincy.

I am so proud that all the funds have been raised and that:

• The Historical Society agreed to take on the this project
• The Northbrook Park District agreed to let us build in the Village Green
• The Northbrook Rotary Club was the first organization to step up to partner with the Historical Society
• The American Legion - named for one of the boys whose name will be on the memorial agreed to be our partner
• The Northbrook Civic Foundation who has given so much to our Village agreed to be our partner
• The Village of Northbrook honored their hometown heroes when they agreed to be our partner
• The Northbrook High School Alumni Association partnered with us. Several of the men are their classmates
• The families of several of the men donated as well as community members

Archibald MacLeish said it best in his moving poem. The poem was written to honor the deaths of men in WWII who had worked with him at the Library of Congress.

The young dead soldiers do not speak

Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them? They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.

They say: We were young. We have died. Remember us.

They say: We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.

They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.

They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours, they will mean what you make them.

They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say, it is you who must say this. We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.

We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.

by Archibald MacLeish,
1892-1982, American Poet

I will sleep well tonight knowing that these men, who are now a large part of my life, will be remembered for generations to come.