Legion to dedicate flags today

By TOM LAVENTURE

[email protected]

Ironwood - A renovated downtown war memorial will be dedicated this afternoon by members of the American Legion Post 5.

A veterans honor guard will open Festival Ironwood with a flag ceremony at 4 p.m. today at Depot Park. The honor guard will then hold a separate flag raising ceremony at the nearby veterans memorial on the northwest corner of Suffolk and Ayer streets at 4:30 p.m.

The ceremony is to mark the completion of the work to remove tall shrubs and install flagpoles at the monument to honor the service men and women who died in service to their country during all wars. The memorial is on post office property and adjacent to the Historic Ironwood Depot.

"We had an informal ceremony two weeks ago when the American Legion honor guard was conducting a burial service and came over afterward," said Jim Somerville, a legion member who led the renovation effort. "For this ceremony we will have the honor guard come over again and re-raise the flags - nothing fancy - and just a way to announce that the renovation is completed and to officially raise the flags in honor of all veterans who died from this city and Ironwood and Erwin townships."

The response to the renovation has been overwhelming, he said. When Legion members are doing work at the memorial people come up to say they had never noticed there was so much to it until the shrubs were removed.

"Now you can get up to it and see the names," Somerville said. "Now there is an additional attraction for people to see."

The next step is for an electrician to improve the nighttime lighting, he said.

Somerville has a background in landscape architecture and is a retired supervisor of the U.S. Forest Service. He and others drew up a site plan and presented it to the post membership for unanimous approval to go ahead with memorial improvements.

Funding for the project came from the Ironwood American Legion.