Canton Veterans Fund Report

To: Residents of Canton

From: Tony Andreotti

Date: January 1, 2014

Subject: Veterans Fund Report

The Canton Veterans Fund was established in August 2002 to provide funds for items and expenses not covered in the Canton Veterans Department budget. Since then, $217,252 has been donated to the Veterans Fund in honor and in memory of Canton veterans by their family and friends. Currently, the fund holds approximately $23,100.

Over the past 12 years, the Veterans Fund has enabled us, as a town, to do the following:

* Conduct graduation ceremonies for World War II, Korean and Vietnam veterans who left high school to serve their country before receiving their diplomas.

* Erect and maintain 77 Fallen Heroes street signs honoring Canton residents who were killed or died in uniform during the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.

* Create the current Veterans Memorial Park at the Canton Corner Cemetery, centralizing the existing war monuments from various downtown locations; add the Civil War and Iraq monuments; install permanent lighting on the monuments, ensuring that the names of these heroes will never be in the dark. Landscaping improvement continues.

* Purchase and dedicate a granite bench at the Veterans Memorial Park with individual plaques of Vietnam veterans who died due to Agent Orange exposure after returning home from Vietnam.

* Dedicate a monument honoring disabled veteran Charles Tolias and the residents of Canton who served with him in WWII.

* Conduct 156 monthly coffee hours, breakfast ceremonies where certificates were issued to distinguished war veterans, participants in the Normandy Invasion, WWII veterans, Korean War veterans, and the veteran members of the American Legion Post 24.

* Organize and staff a weekend ceremony of the Traveling Vietnam Memorial, a 3/5 scale, mobile wall standing six feet tall at the center and covering almost 300 feet end to end; held a welcome home ceremony for our Vietnam veterans at Memorial Field on 9/11/11.

* Purchase and install memorial headstones for a Korean War veteran, WWII veteran’s son, Vietnam veteran’s son, and replaced the headstone of Edward J. Beatty, killed in action in WWI.

* Assemble, fund, and maintain the Veterans Department Funeral Honor Guard, enabling the department to pay final tribute to Canton veterans for their service to our country. The honor guard has honored 511 veterans during the past 12 years.

Other expenses paid from the fund have included: lodging and cash payouts to homeless veterans; the publishing of a Canton Fallen Heroes calendar for the schools; the taping of several Cable 8 ceremonies and interviews; medical transportation assistance for veterans; payments for rent, funeral expenses, auto repairs, food, fuel, and other medical expenses not covered in the town budget or state and federal programs; Memorial Day program expenses; items and postage cost for packages mailed to our troops.

Donations to this fund have exceeded all expectations. I wish to thank everyone in the community for their support, generosity and trust.

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Posted by Canton Citizen on Jan 16 2014. Filed under From One Citizen to Another, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.