LIMESTONE, Maine — On Tuesday, May 27, a hall at the Loring Job Corps Center will be re-dedicated to honor the memory of a humble County man who was a Maine state potato inspector for over 35 years — who was also a Metal of Honor recipient.
A member of the Texan 36th Infantry Division, the late Lt. Edward C. Dahlgren traveled to the White House in August of 1945 to receive the Medal of Honor, presented by President Harry Truman, in recognition of his heroics during the war that saved many lives.
The Dining Hall at the Loring Job Corps Center, “Dahlgren Hall,” received its initial dedication when the building was part of the Loring Air Force Base, but Community Liaison Roger Felix was inspired to re-dedicate the hall to celebrate Dahlgren’s memory, and the idea became contagious.
Felix said that while the main reason for the rededication is to celebrate the Metal of Honor recipient, there are multiple facets of Dahlgren’s life worth celebrating.
“He was a simple man who did something heroic, and I think that every person who walks in that building should know it,” Felix said, “He didn’t ask for anything … he said ‘I did what I needed to do’ and “It was my job’ … he never once thought he was a hero, from any of the interviews I’ve ever seen.”
Dahlgren’s daughter, Susan Dahlgren Daigneault, EdD, will be attending the re-dedication ceremony on May 27 at 11 a.m., and is slated to bring with her some words that may sound familiar to anyone who attended the first dedication decades ago.
Daigneault went on to write a book about her father and his struggle with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder; promoting the book in 2013, Daigneault said “Because American troops are in far off places in this world, fighting for causes that sometimes cost them their lives, and because our veterans from World War II are a dying breed, it is entirely fitting that we save the stories of our veterans so that their experiences and their voices will never be forgotten and so that current generations might learn about the horrors of war and how the impact of battle never really goes away.”
Dahlgren’s story extends far past the war; he died in 2006 at the Maine Veterans Home in Caribou, and the Mars Hill resident worked to support his fellow veterans for years.
“I didn’t want people to just think about his history of combat — I want people to know what he did when he came back,” Felix described. “He struggled on the inside, but he worked on the outside and was one of the people who helped develop the Veterans Cemetery in Caribou, and he sat on the board that helped establish the VA clinic in Caribou — all of these things he did when he could have gone into his own isolated world … he was still out there trying to help is fellow comrades, and that says volumes about people,” he added.
While Daigneault is also slated to be the speaker at the Maine Veterans Cemetery ceremony on Memorial Day, she will also be the keynote speaker at the rededication of the hall named for her father.
Felix is optimistic that there will be a good turnout for the Tuesday event, and believes it’s worth attending “to always be reminded that the cost of freedom has a price, and that there are ordinary men from The County who’ve done extraordinary things.”
