A Legacy Etched in Stone: Harvard Commemorates Medal of Honor Alumni
Nicholas Benson, a stone carver from the John Stevens Shop, chisels the name of Alexander Archer Vandegrift into a stone plaque of Harvard Medal of Honor recipients. Photos by Jeffrey Blackwell/Memorial Church Communications.
By Jeffrey Blackwell
Creative and Communications Lead
The Memorial Church of Harvard University
For a week in September, the Sanctuary of the Memorial Church echoed with the rhythmic tapping of a chisel in the hand of an artist who inscribed the names of two soldiers onto the stone plaque listing Harvard affiliates bearing the United States Medal of Honor.
Union Army Officer Clinton A. Cilley, a Harvard graduate from the class of 1859, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his leadership and actions during the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. U.S. Marine General Alexander Archer Vandegrift, who received an honorary degree from Harvard Law School in 1946, was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1942 for his leadership as commanding officer of the 1st Marine Division in operations against Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands.
This fall, the names of both men were added to the plaque on the northeast wall of the Sanctuary, which was rededicated during a Veterans Day Ceremony at the church hosted by Harvard College and the Harvard Veterans Alumni Organization (HVAO) on Nov. 11.
“The plaque lists the names of 20 Crimson warriors from four of the five military branches of the U.S. War Department,” said retired Navy Capt. Paul E. Mawn ’63, a member of the HVAO Board of Directors. “That is the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force with their span of combined services ranging from the Civil War to the Vietnam War.”
The event marked the third time the plaque has been dedicated since the original, with 10 names, was hung on the Memorial Church wall in 2009. It was replaced in 2011 with the discovery of six additional Medal of Honor recipients. The name of a Civil War veteran was added in 2014.
“It will be added to again, because we have a current Medal of Honor recipient at Harvard now,” said Lydia Rossman, HVOA Vice President. “We have the hope there will be more. The HVAO is working with the Medal of Honor Society to identify and assist recipients who would like to go to Harvard.”
A stone plaque in the Sanctuary of the Memorial Church honors 20 Harvard recipients of the Medal of Honor.
The Memorial Church was dedicated on Veterans Day in 1932 in honor of the Harvard dead of World War I, whose names are inscribed in the Memorial Room. At one time, all students had to enter the church through that room from the doors facing Harvard Yard, said Congressman Seth Moulton (Massachusetts 6th district), AB, Physics; MBA, Harvard Business School; MPA, Harvard Kennedy School, and U.S. Marine veteran, who spoke at the Veterans Day and rededication event.
“Harvard students were expected to come in off of Harvard Yard so that every day they walked in, they would walk through that Memorial Room built to honor our World War I veterans, and see as they walked through an inscription,” he said. “That's one of my favorite quotes and probably the most important in my life. ‘While a bright future beckons,’ it reads, ‘they freely gave their lives and fondest hopes for us and our allies that we might learn from them courage in peace to spend our lives making a better world for others.’”
Congressman Seth Moulton speaks at the Veterans Day event at the Memorial Church.
The names of the World War I dead are now accompanied by those killed in World War II, the Korean Conflict, and Vietnam. There are also plaques dedicated to the women of Radcliffe killed in the First World War, four Harvard men who died in the service of the German military during World War I, and one honoring four Harvard-trained chaplains who were killed in the sinking of the S.S. Dorchester, a troop transport, in 1943.
“This church, Harvard's Church, stands as an abiding monument of mourning and an edifice of memory at the heart of Harvard Yard, said the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity, and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church. “We remember these dead today as we do every day. But this day and at this gathering, we also acknowledge and honor all those Harvard affiliates past and present who have served in defense of their country's highest ideals.”