Plan to honour dead of world wars
John Deasy is heading up a memorial committee which is dedicated to financing and erecting an appropriate memorial to Waterford men and women who participated in the two conflicts.
The aim is to have the memorial ready in time for 2014 – the anniversary of the start of the Great War.
A new website, waterfordmemorial.ie is up and running and is designed in part to garner information from people in Waterford about their own relatives who may have served in the wars and to attract feedback about the form and location of the proposed memorial.
The initiative is being organised in conjunction with the Waterford County Museum and the Waterford County Library Service.
The library service has already compiled a Waterford War Dead database which serves as a starting point for people researching relatives.
“Our initial goal,” Mr Deasy said, “is to motivate people to contact us so we can complete the database and construct as accurate a record as is possible of those who were from Waterford. It’s vital we get that kind of interaction and information from families who may have had a relative involved.”
Part of the website’s goal is to collate public opinion on what form the memorial should take.
The committee hopes that a business will be interested in sponsoring a large percentage of the cost.
The Waterford Memorial Committee is made up of people who have spent years researching local involvement in both the first and second world wars. The hope is that their collective knowledge and experience can lead to a comprehensive and accurate listing of local participants in both wars.
“Some people might ask: ‘why are you doing this now?’,” Mr Deasy said. “I think that if this diverts people’s attention away from the disastrous economic issues going on and gets them to research a relative over the Christmas period it could be a healthy diversion for some.”
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