Help build Orange County's

THE PROBLEM

Every Memorial Day, the names of Orange County’s fallen veterans are read from boards made with a wood burner, leaned against a fountain in the park. It’s all they’ve ever had. No stone. No permanence. No place their families can visit on a quiet afternoon and know their sacrifice is remembered.

And every year that passes, the names get a little harder to remember. Families move away. Generations turn over. The stories of who these people were and what they gave start to fade. Not because anyone chose to forget, but because there’s nowhere to go to remember.

For 80 years, good people have tried to change that. Lt. Col. Speiden proposed the idea in 1945 and died the following year. Others picked it up and couldn’t get it across the line. Four locations. Three generations. The promise kept getting pushed forward and never kept. Now it’s finally within reach, and the only thing that can stop it is running out of time again.

In 1945, Lt. Col. Leith Speiden first suggested Orange County build a memorial for its war dead. He died the following year without seeing it happen. Clivie Cluff, a long-time American Legion commander, tried to pick it up. He couldn’t raise the money.

In 2012, a retired Air Force navigator & pilot named Sid stood at the back of a Memorial Day ceremony in Taylor Park, looked at the names burned into planks of wood, and thought: this isn’t right.

Fourteen years, four locations, a traumatic brain injury, and a cancer diagnosis later — Sid is still going. The Town of Orange has approved Chatter Island as the site.

Paul Carter, the VFW quartermaster and lifelong Orange County resident, drew up the new design in a single week. The drawings are done. The location is confirmed. What is needed now is the funding to break ground.

PROPOSED RENDERING — CHATTER ISLAND

EVERY NAME, IN STONE

A PLACE TO GATHER

A PROMISE KEPT

From the founding of the Republic through the Great War.

A century of names from the modern American century.

The most recent fallen—and room for the future.

Read the stories of Orange County's fallen. Where they served, and what they gave. The more people who know, the harder the names are to forget.

Every dollar goes directly to building the memorial at Chatter Island. Every gift is tax-deductible through the VFW.

Tell one person in Orange County who hasn't heard this story. Share the site. Forward the newsletter. One conversation at a time.