Group will replace damaged Armed Forces tribute next May
A new Blue Star Memorial Highway marker will be dedicated at Point Lookout, located along Route 40 on Summit Mountain in Wharton Township, on May 25, just before Memorial Day.
The new marker will replace the damaged original, which was dedicated in 2007 as a part of a nationwide program that is a tribute to the American armed forces. The local marker is sponsored by the Great Meadows Garden Club in cooperation with the Garden Club Federation of Pennsylvania and PennDOT District 12.
Two members of Great Meadows Garden Club, which is based in Farmington, discovered the original marker was vandalized last February. At first, they thought the marker was stolen when they saw it was cut from its pole. Later that same night, they found the marker under the snow. At first it was being kept in storage until repairs could be made.
But Diane Hughes, president of Great Meadows, recently explained, “The damage was too great. It couldn’t be repaired, so we have ordered a brand new one. We were able to do this with a couple of great donations.”
The donations helped the garden club cover the cost of the new marker, which is $1,400. But club members decided to avoid another winter and wait until spring to install and then dedicate the new marker.
The original Blue Star Memorial Highway marker at Point Lookout was dedicated on July 2, 2007, with much fanfare in a ceremony that included members of the garden club and representatives from veterans organizations as well as local, county and state elected officials.
Measuring 41 inches high by 45 inches wide, the marker stood on a 7-foot, 6-inch tall pole that was surrounded by a tribute garden that included a half circle of 21 euonymous bushes with 100 geranium plants and small American flags installed every spring.
Several of the bushes were damaged in the vandalism, and the club will not replace them or plant the geraniums until the marker is reinstalled. The garden club, which has tended Point Lookout for 50 years, did keep up the long, narrow side beds that include perennials from the members’ gardens.
Great Meadows is a member of the National Garden Clubs Inc., which founded the Blue Star Memorial Marker Program in 1945 to honor men and women serving in the military during World War II. The name came from the Blue Star Service Banner, a tradition that began during World War I in which banners with a blue star were displayed in the window of a home to let the public know someone from that family was serving in the military.
Started in New Jersey, the Blue Star Memorial Highway Marker program grew across the country and was expanded to include the entire Armed Forces.
A brochure for the program explains, “Garden clubs pictured a ribbon of living memorial plantings traversing every state. The designation of Blue Star Highways was achieved through petitions to the state legislatures and cooperation with the Departments of Transportation. A uniform marker was designed to identify the highways.”
Markers continue to be dedicated each year on highways, veterans’ facilities, national cemeteries, parks, civil and historic sites, the brochure noted. The Wharton Township marker is the only one in Fayette County, according to Hughes. She said other nearby markers in Pennsylvania include one at Interstate 79 and two at Interstate 70, both near the West Virginia border, and one at New Stanton.
Hughes noted the Pennsylvania Turnpike is also a Blue Star Memorial Highway. Altogether, there are about 200 markers in seven states in the National Garden Club’s Central Atlantic Region of which Great Meadows is a part.
She noted, “It’s important that Great Meadows Garden Club be part of this to honor our veterans from the 1940s until today. They are all across the country from New Jersey to California. Once you see one, your eye just catches another. You’re more aware, and that’s why we wanted to do one locally so people would be aware of our veterans and the work they do.”