Dedication of the Peabody Memorial to Soldiers on May 30, 2024

“One night on the Marne, while the great second battle was on, I met a friend. We had only a few minutes together, but I managed to give him the address of a friend of both of us, whom I had just heard from. He was a fine chap, the absent friend, and I had known him when we flew our kites in Highland Park. I was badly hit when I learned he had been killed.”

This passage was written by Francis Fowler Hogan to his mother when he was away at war. Hogan never returned home, killed October 17, 1918, and the friend that Hogan had spent a few minutes with on the Marne that night was Hervey Allen, a soldier who survived the war and later became an acclaimed American writer.

The two men shared their few moments together, Hogan giving Allen the address of Walter Dabney Frazier, a friend whom they “had known in happy times.” Frazier was killed on June 5, 1918, while serving with the 5^th Marine Regiment during the Chateau-Thierry Offensive. During those few moments together, Allen had intentionally spared Hogan from immediate grief, knowing their dear friend “Dabs” had already been killed. Allen wrote, “We seemed too close to it all then.”

The names Francis Fowler Hogan and Walter Dabney Frazier would later be cast into a bronze plaque at the base of the Peabody Memorial to Soldiers placed in front of Peabody High School in Pittsburgh in 1924. Mrs. Mable Frazier, the mother of Dabs, along with five other Gold Star Mothers, unveiled the memorial to the public at the ceremony on May 30, 1924.

Fast forward, 100 years to the exact day and hour, when a crowd gathered in the student courtyard of the Barack Obama Academy of International Studies in Pittsburgh to unveil the Peabody Memorial to Soldiers once again. This time, it was revealing the magnificent restoration of the WWI memorial in time for its centennial.

James A. Hill, a driving force and co-chair behind the restoration project, served as Master of Ceremonies. Hill led a program filled with local dignitaries and a host of affiliates who all received much deserved recognition in restoring the 100-year memorial originally constructed by famed sculptor Frank Vittor. Acknowledgement was given to co-chair Matthew Falcone, President of Preservation Pittsburgh, the group who served as fiscal sponsor for the project.

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey address the crowd on what he called an “amazing day.” He said, “This is so monumental in so many different ways. For our kids to really learn about being a veteran, protecting our country, and some of the lives that we lost. A lot of times they hear about it in school, but its different when you can actually have someone pour that type of wisdom into you.”

The students of Obama Academy performed and arrangement of songs to celebrate the occasion just before the speakers, students, and families of the war veterans gathered around the memorial to pull away a large red colored cloth to reveal the beautiful, newly polished bronze figures underneath.

The sculpture includes a representation of Columbia using her trumpet to call her youth to take up the fight, a young soldier stepping forward to take up the call, a mother parting with her son as he heads off the war, the figure Victory about to crown the retuning soldier with a wreath of laurel while the figure Immortality stands next to the soldier in a somber stare.

I was honored to be present to witness the re-dedication of this memorial and share the moment with the leaders, volunteers, students and former alumni of Peabody High who attended the event. Readers of this “Dispatch” may recall an article about the memorial earlier this year, February 2024,

As consumers of this history, many of us share a mutual passion for this subject and wait in great anticipation for the unveiling of the new WWI memorial in Pershing Park. On this May afternoon, I imagined what might be the similarities in this dedication as compared to the one planned in Washington DC. The pomp and circumstance that goes with such ceremonies is quite intentional, and so finding the symbolism and meaning behind such events, I went out of my way to make sure I personally shook hands with several of the key people involved in this restoration project. I went up to the Peabody memorial conservator Michael Belman and thanked him for the work he put into the physical restoration. In a weird way, I imagined myself thanking Frank Vittor himself for creating the sculpture, and even thinking, what would I say if I could ever personally thank Howard Sabin for the memorial he has created.

Before and after condition of Frank Vittor’s bronze sculpture on the Peabody Memorial to Soldiers in Pittsburgh. The restored memorial was rededicated on May 30, 2024, exactly 100 years after its original dedication ceremony.

As I walked around the restored sculpture, admiring the masterpiece, I recalled the poem that Hervey Allen dedicated to his friend Francis Fowler Hogan. His words hold powerful emotional symbolism worthy of sharing here today as we remember their friendship, and honor the names of all the men listed on this memorial. Lest we forget.

SOLDIER-POET

To Francis Fowler Hogan by Hervey Allen (1921).

I think at first like us he did not see

The goal to which the screaming eagles flew;

For romance lured him, France, and chivalry;

But Oh! Before the end he knew, he knew!

And gave his first full love to Liberty,

And met her face to face one lurid night

While the guns boomed their shuddering minstrelsy

And all the Argonne glowed with demon light.

And Liberty herself came through the wood,

And with her dear, boy lover kept the tryst;

Clasped in her grand, Greek arms he understood

Whose were the fatal lips that he had kissed—

Lips that the soul of Youth has loved from old—

Hot lips of Liberty that kiss men cold.

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