There’s nothing flashy about the memorial that was re-dedicated this week at Brandon’s Town Hall after being lost, found, and recently restored. It’s a simple bronze plaque dedicated to the Brandon High School students who served in World War II and lists the names of those who died in service: F. Malcolm Douglas, Elmer Kent, Maurice A. LaRock, Harvey C. Oliver, Maurice E. Palmer, and Leslie E. Pfenning.

It would be easy to walk right past it on the lower-level pillar where it is now displayed. But local historian Kevin Thornton hopes that every now and then, you’ll pause to take a longer look.

“Once in a while you have to look it in the face and think about what it actually means, because we still have kids who almost every day are walking up that hill playing basketball, and it’s up to us … to make sure they don’t need to make these kinds of sacrifices,” Thornton said at the Town Hall presentation this Wednesday, Sept. 24.

A long road to restoration

The plaque was originally dedicated in 1947 at Brandon High School by the classes of 1945 through 1949 — that is, by the classmates, friends, and siblings of young men whose passing was still fresh in their minds and hearts. The student council and the Brandon chapter of Future Farmers of America, for which Maurice Palmer had served as treasurer, joined in presenting the memorial.

It hung in the high school for 14 years. When the school closed, Leslie Pfenning’s younger brother, Art, took it to the family home in Forest Dale. Leslie had been fatally wounded during the invasion of Sicily in 1943, when he was 21.

“It affected [Art] his whole life, losing his big brother,” said Ann Pfenning, Art’s daughter, who attended the Wednesday event. “Back then they all slept in the same bed, and when he was 12 he lost his big brother. He never came home.”

Later, Ann gave the memorial to the Brandon American Legion post because she “wanted everyone to be able to see it instead of just the people at 152 North Street.”

It was boxed up during the Legion’s renovation and went missing for a period. Several years ago, the plaque reappeared, and that’s when Thornton, who has taught history at UVM, decided to take charge of restoring it. He wanted to take it to Otter Valley Union Middle and High School on the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, in 2025, and talk to students about it.

“I felt that it was really important to let kids know what this was all about,” he said.

The BHS Alumni Group pitched in funds to make it happen, and Thornton took the battered plaque to Conant Metal & Light in Burlington for repair. Once they heard the story, he said, they agreed to do the work even if the donations didn’t cover the full cost.

“Their team handled the restoration with great sympathy and skill, and they really deserve all the credit in the world for making this happen,” he said in an email.

Reflecting the scale and horror of the war

At the Wednesday event, Thornton shared the individual stories of the six men named on the plaque, plus one more, Joseph Mulcahy, who is not on the plaque but grew up in Sudbury and died in the Philippines campaign in 1945. In sharing their personal stories, he said, he hoped to restore meaning to sometimes overused terms like “sacrifice,” “courage,” and “honor.”

“We had a sailor, a Marine, someone in the Army Air Corps, and a number of soldiers, and they died in places as scattered as Taiwan to Sicily,” he said. “So the scale and the horror of the war are represented in these kids, most of whom walked up the hill every day to go to school.”

Drawing on old newspaper clippings, grave markers, photos, and family stories, he shared as much as he was able to find about each one of them. They ranged in age from 18 to 36 at the time of their deaths.

When he finished, he told his rapt audience, “Now we can talk about what sacrifice means. Sacrifice means drowning in an iron box below decks after three years in a hellacious prison. Sacrifice means being machine-gunned 25,000 feet in the sky in the freezing air … Sacrifice also means sending your brother home in a box. It means opening your loving son’s Christmas presents after he’s dead. It means spending 51 years without your only child around the dinner table.”

All of these things were experienced by the men named on the memorial and their families. It is Thornton’s hope that by remembering and honoring them, these experiences will never again be shared by future generations in this community or others.

Kevin Thornton will be telling the stories of the six men named on the memorial, plus Joseph Mulcahy, in a series of articles for the Current in coming weeks.

Photos by Winifred Bird.