A Tribute to Those Who Served
Some of the earliest memorials and monuments in Johnson County commemorate the many soldiers who have served in wars. After the Civil War, Kansas was known as a “soldier state,” a place where many veterans settled. Many early communities had a chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization for Union Civil War Veterans.
By the 1880s, these chapters of aging veterans often sponsored and placed monuments, many of them in cemeteries, to honor those who had fought and died during the Civil War. In Union Cemetery in the former community of Monticello, there is a granite monument with an urn at the top placed in memory of the many heroes of 1861-1865. It was dedicated on May 30, 1895. A soldier monument was placed in the Olathe Cemetery by the Franklin Post No. 8 of the GAR in 1893 and formally dedicated on Memorial Day in 1897. It features a white marble sculpture of a soldier standing at rest on a granite base.
Two of the more unique monuments are found in the Spring Hill Cemetery. The first, dedicated on May 30, 1897, is topped by a large polished granite orb inscribed “Rest-Soldier Rest.” The entry of the cemetery itself also bears significance. In 1923, the Women’s Relief Corps (WRC), an auxiliary women’s group of the GAR, dedicated a monument there. Made of brick and stone, it is devoted not only to the veterans of the Civil War, but also the Spanish American War of 1898 and World War I.
One of the more unique monuments in the county, dedicated to all veterans, is a sculpture called “Hands of Freedom” located in Veterans Park at the corner of Pflumm and Johnson Drive in Shawnee. The two multiple-tiered granite columns hold a bronze banded globe at the top. It symbolically represents the hands of all veterans holding the world aloft in freedom. Also at this park is a granite monument for the members of the 555th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion who fought in World War II.
The first memorial to the Vietnam War in the Kansas City Metropolitan area was placed in Antioch Park in Merriam, Kansas. It was dedicated on November 11, 1974, and renovated in 1998. It commemorates the 57 Johnson County residents missing in action or killed during that war.
Other war memorials include a limestone monument at 119th and Mission Road to commemorate Leawood residents who served during the Vietnam War. The bronze plaque on top acknowledges the two residents who were missing in action or killed. It was dedicated in 1988. In 1998, Gardner renamed Manor Park to Memorial Park to honor the residents of Gardner who served in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War. In addition to a brick walkway listing the names of the soldiers involved in the various wars, a five-ton marker made of gray granite was placed at the newly named park. At this time, plans are in the works for another war memorial. A Korean War Veterans Memorial is scheduled to be built in Overland Park in 2006.
--ALBUM vol. 18, no. 4 (fall 2005)