On this day in Arlington history: Nov 11, 1931, Arlington Unveils War Dead Tablet: 2,000 See the Daughter of One Who Dies Bare Monument. Washington Post article covered the event:
“While 2,000 persons stood with bared heads as the bugle notes of taps sounded. Katherine Bruce, 13-year-old daughter of Robert J. Bruce unveiled Arlington County’s memorial to the world War Dead upon the tablet, on which her father’s name appears.
“Opening the county’s most impressive Armistice Day celebration, the Fort Myer Band played “America, the Beautiful.” The Rev. Perry L. Mitchell, pastor of Clarendon Baptist Church, delivered the invocation.
“The exercises at the monument were concluded with the playing of “The Star Spangled Banner” by the Band of the Washington and Lee High School.
In a recess in the granite structure is the tablet upon which the names of 13 Arlingtonians who gave their lives appear. “After the dedication, there was a parade, headed by the Fort Myer Band, in which Victory Post, of Washington, Alexandria Post, Washington & Lee Cadets & girls auxiliary, cadet band, & Arlington County Post, American Legion, marched. The memorial was erected by the legionnaires and citizens of the county from granite quarried in Arlington Cemetery.”
Today we know this memorial was incomplete. Three more men from Arlington were not included, probably because the information was collected with an ad in a newspaper asking people to supply the names of their relatives who had died in the war. Those with no relatives or none in the area or who didn’t see the ad could not have responded.
This memorial is located in Clarendon now with historical context of the monument and the racist separation of the names two African-American men who were listed on the commemorative memorial: Arthur Morgan and Ralph Lowe. The 1931 newspaper coverage of the installation of this memorial is no longer enough to put all the men from Arlington in appropriate historical context. See the monument AND the nearby historical interpretive signs.
