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| Photo courtesy of Shawn Cote Phil Bosse, part-time woodworker and full-time district representative for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, is putting the finishing touches on a wooden display-cabinet unit he is building at his Caribou home for the Northern Maine Veterans Memorial Cemetery. The cabinets will be used to display veterans’ artifacts donated to the cemetery by members of the community. |
By Shawn Cote
Special to the Aroostook Republican
CARIBOU — If Harry Hafford had his way, the Northern Maine Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Caribou would have a proper memorial building with its own chapel and history room. Unfortunately, the Northern Maine Veterans Commemorative Cemetery Corporation, of which Hafford is chairman, has so far been unable to obtain funding from the Veterans Administration for the construction of such a building.
“The VA is in the business of burying people,” Hafford said. “We’re in the business of beautifying and enhancing.”
In lieu of a building, said Hafford, the cemetery will soon be getting 12 feet of display cabinets to accommodate veterans’ artifacts and memorabilia that NMVCCC is asking members of the community to donate to the organization’s latest project. The unit will be five feet tall with a three-foot section on each side, including a face display cabinet with glass doors and glass shelves.
“They’ll be in place by the opening of school,” said Hafford of the cabinets, which are being constructed to form a single unit that can easily be disassembled and moved when and if relocation becomes necessary.
“The big thing for me, the reason I was so adamant we needed this, was school children. I want them to do field trips out here. I want them to see what veterans have done. We wanted visual effects that [school children] could see. I think it’ll be a great learning tool for our young kids,” he said.
In other words, the cabinets are a means of exhibiting the kind of concrete imagery and personal possessions more apt to have a visual impact on children than symbolic objects such as flags and monuments might.
“We’re going to display the items we get on a rotating basis,” he said. “If people have a specific article, say, from the Civil War or World War II or Korea, it would be awful nice when they donate the article that they have a little story to go with it. But, most important, they can contact me at my home at any time, and we’ll set up something and we can talk.”
Hafford said members of the veterans committee will be in charge of determining which donated items will go on display. He said he’s also looking for people outside the committee to give the group insight into “what the public would like to see, not just what we as veterans would like to see.”
NMVCCC is raising the money for the cabinets. “Matter of fact, we’re still a little short,” Hafford said. Fortunately, Phil Bosse, district representative for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and a skilled woodworker in his own right, offered to help out.
“He’s an excellent carpenter,” Hafford said of Bosse. “One of the smartest moves I made when I took over as chairman of the committee was that I included our congressional people at our meetings. So they come to all of our meetings, and they’re aware of what we’re doing, if we’re trying to raise money, if we’re applying for money.” Hafford said that he was in the process of pricing the cabinets and what it would cost to build them when Bosse offered to donate his time and woodworking skills to the project. “And that was very nice,” said Hafford.
Though the committee is still in the process of raising money for the undertaking, Hafford said they’re a lot closer to his goal than they would have been if they had been forced to hire someone to build the cabinets. Thanks to Bosse’s contributions, a project that might have cost NMVCCC upwards of $12,000 now has an estimated price tag of about $4,500.
Bosse, for his part, was happy to help out.
“I volunteered to do this for the Northern Maine Veterans Committee,” he said. “The veterans in the committee thought that it was really important that when children’s groups come out that they would be able to see some of the paraphernalia that comes from military families — the medals that have been won by veterans in this area. We have two Congressional Medal of Honor recipients in this area, and we have other medal recipients, and to be able to see what those medals look like and to hear the stories of what the veterans have done is really important. And these [cabinets] will allow for those items to be put on display and the stories to be told about what veterans in his area have done for our country.”
Hafford is confident that members of the community will come through in donating material for the project. “I’ve been a volunteer out here since 1999,” he said, “and it even amazes me sometimes what the residents will do for us. They’ve been very generous and very supportive of this veterans cemetery. So I think this will do well.”
