Local leaders are considering a new plaque for Arlington’s World War I memorial in Clarendon.
As reported by the Sun Gazette, the 1930s-era memorial has a plaque with a dozen names of local war dead. Two of the names are presented away from the others — and include the extra label “colored.”
Arlington County paid its annual tribute to fallen law enforcement officers this morning.
The county’s observance of Peace Officers Memorial Day took place at 8 a.m., in the Arlington County Justice Center Plaza at 1425 N. Courthouse Road. The six Arlington County Police Department officers who have died in the line of duty were remembered during the ceremony, as was a seventh officer who died after suffering a heart attack and falling to his death in the 1920s.
The inaugural Jennifer Bush-Lawson Foundation Memorial 5K and Family Fun Day will be held on Saturday, Nov. 21 at the Knights of Columbus at 5115 Little Falls Road, the same road on which Lawson was hit last year.
The 5K starts at 8 a.m., followed by the kids run at 9:30 a.m. After the races, the foundation will hold a family fun day, with music, food trucks and a beer garden. There will also be kids activities, including face painting, a moon bounce and balloon animals.
Each t-shirt represents a victim of gun violence in the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia in 2014. Each will have a name, age and date of death on it.
“The display is set up to encourage people to walk among the shirts and reflect on those victims and their loved ones,” Rev. Kathy Dwyer said.
“The Pentagon is the only 9/11 attack site without a visitor center or museum to explain the historic significance of what happened on that day. Among the 500,000+ visitors who come to the Memorial each year, few know how different this location is from all others in Washington, D.C.,” said James Laychak, the president of the Pentagon Memorial Fund, in a press release.
The new visitor center location is in front of the Pentagon Memorial and on the flight path taken by Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, killing 184 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
An Arlington, Va., church has hung 176 T-shirts on its front lawn, with each shirt representing someone shot to death in the D.C. area last year.
First Presbyterian Church, at the intersection of N. Carlin Springs Road and Vermont Street, steps from Ballston Common Mall, displayed the shirts on Saturday. Each garment shows the name of a victim, the victim’s age and the date in 2013 that he or she died.
Arlington County held its annual observance of Peace Officers Memorial Day this morning.
The ceremony took place at 8:00 p.m. in the plaza between police headquarters and the county jail. Arlington police officers and sheriff’s deputies were joined by county officials and law enforcement personnel from surrounding jurisdictions in remembering the six Arlington County police officers who lost their lives in the line of duty.
This Saturday at 6:45 p.m., Arlington Little League, in cooperation with the Mothers of North Arlington, Long Branch PTA and Evolve All Martial Arts, is coordinating a memorial ceremony at Barcroft Sport and Fitness Center (4200 S. Four Mile Run Drive) on baseball field No. 1. Those in attendance are asked to wear orange, Andrew’s favorite color, and to write remembrances of Andrew for his family to keep.
“While for me this is a personal tragedy that I will never recover from, the community has been amazing in their support of Andrew and me in their efforts to honor his memory and the amazing boy he was,” Louisa Marinaccio, Andrew’s mother, told ARLnow.com in an email. “Andrew loved orange, the Pittsburgh Pirates and his momma. He dreamed of pitching for the Pirates in the World Series and owning a mint condition Honus Wagner card.”
Lawson, 39, was placing her two-year-old daughter in the rear seat of her minivan, after volunteering at the school, when the truck struck her and the side of the van. Her daughter was unhurt. Her two sons, who attend Nottingham, were inside the school at the time.
The family had recently returned from a vacation to Costa Rica, we’re told.
The memorial service will start at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 4, at Arlington Central Library (1015 N. Quincy Street), according to Atkins’ friend and fellow Civic Federation delegate Suzanne Sundberg. Atkins died peacefully at his Bluemont home on Monday, Dec. 9.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to VORA (Virginia Organizations Responding to AIDS) — at VORA Main Office, P.O. Box 4780, Woodbridge, Va. 22194 — or to the Animal Welfare League of Arlington — at AWLA, Attention: Development Manager, 2650 S. Arlington Mill Drive, Arlington, Va. 22206.
Arlington Volunteer Fire Department, Company One held its annual memorial service and celebrated its 90th anniversary on Saturday afternoon.
Held at the fire station at 500 S. Glebe Road, the ceremony was also the unveiling of a park to the north of the station and new memorial statues honoring firefighters, both career and volunteer, who have died. Family members of deceased firefighters laid roses and the feet of the memorial during Saturday’s ceremony.
(Updated at 4:30 p.m.) In preparation for Memorial Day, there’s a place in Arlington that might be worth a look — and it’s not Arlington National Cemetery.
Thousands pass by it daily, but many don’t realize that the large, stone structure flanked by cannons across from Clarendon Ballroom (and near the Clarendon Metro station) is actually a war memorial. It was put up by the American Legion and honors Arlington citizens who died in combat, up through Vietnam.
