“A celebration to honor America’s veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good” is how the U.S. government describes Veterans Day.
As the holiday, approaches, the Plainwell Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9377 suggested pointing to the efforts of a group of Plainwell women who have done that every week.
Post commander Art Teitgen said, “It’s really all about the veterans. These five ladies meet every Wednesday at the library and they’ve been doing this for some months now.”
The group has been putting together a biography of every known veteran of every American war from Plainwell.
“They started with every vet killed in combat from the Plainwell area,” Teitgen said. “They’ve expanded that and are trying to get to every veteran, period.”
Post historian Jack Shoemaker had been trying to encourage someone to take up the effort, Teitgen said, and Stamm took that on, to compile biographies of all the veterans who died in combat with biographies from available information. A book of them is in the Charles A. Ransom District Library where the group meets every Wednesday to work.
“We decided we’d try to make a book of every veteran in any war from Plainwell,” Plainwell historian Sandy Stamm said. “We’re working on it; we maybe have half the As done.”
Working fulltime on the book are Stamm, Lynda Hawley and Jane Curtis, while Jan Ragainis Pat DeDoes, Sue Lacoss and Judy Whymant are splitting their time between other historical tasks and the veterans’ bios.
“Lynda or Jane writes out the genealogy a bit, then Pat does their obituary and then I just add to it as the researcher,” Stamm said.
The VFW post gave the group a grant to cover materials needed.
“We’ll eventually have the full alphabet, probably no Xs but I know there’s some Zs,” Stamm said. “When we get done, we’ll have 25 books. Don’t expect us to be done real quick, the other one took me a year working by myself.
“It won’t be done overnight.”
As they work on the bios, they are also spending time figuring out where veterans are buried in three Plainwell-area cemeteries.
Teitgen hopes this will help with making sure everyone who served gets their grave marked with a flag for Memorial Day.
“When there are so many vets buried there and we place flags on Memorial Day, you can’t just go through and read the inscription, it’s impossible; it would take too much time,” he said.
The members of the group was all to be thanked for their time and efforts.
“I just think it’s a great thing for a community this size to have that many people interested in performing that service,” Teitgen said. “We want to give all these ladies all the credit in the world and keep working with them.”
Contact Dan Pepper at dpepper@allegannews.com or at (269) 673-5534 or (269) 685-9571.
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