Trafford officials to mark war memorial’s centennial on Veterans Day
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Trafford residents were ready to celebrate Veterans Day before it was even a national holiday.
“They billed it as an all-day event on Nov. 11, 1919, but the planners were thinking it would be declared a holiday and people would have the day off,” said local historian Andrew Capets. “That didn’t work out, so they had to move it to Nov. 15.”
Armistice Day — which would be known as Veterans Day beginning in 1954 — wouldn’t become an official national holiday until 1938.
Regardless, the stone memorial to the borough’s World War I veterans will mark its 100th anniversary on Monday, and a centennial ceremony will take place in conjunction with Veterans Day.
“The original plan was a homecoming celebration, a celebration of the first anniversary of the armistice,” Capets said. “The parade actually started with six members of the borough who were Civil War veterans.”
After the parade, a football game took place followed by a turkey dinner and dance for veterans at the former Trafford Inn, which most would recognize nowadays as the former Mellon Bank building.
“The last Trafford vet returned home from World War I in late October 1919,” Capets said.
On Monday, a 10:30 a.m. ceremony marking the memorial’s centennial will take place at Trafford Veterans Memorial Park on Edgewood Avenue, featuring music from the Trafford Middle School chorus and the Penn-Trafford High School band and chorus. Bells of peace will toll at 11 a.m., and the Trafford American Legion will host a light lunch in the Legion hall on Cavitt Avenue afterward.
“When I look at the (Trafford) memorial, it says, ‘These boys honored their country’s call,’ and down below it says, ‘So that liberty, justice and equality would not perish,’” Capets said. “And in my mind, those words are equal in strength today.
“Those virtues for veterans are as strong today as they were a century ago,” he said.