Can Memorial Field commemorate our complex history?

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Wouldn’t this be a good time to amend the bronze plaque at the gate to Memorial Field?

Pried off by thieves who likely meant to pawn it, it was recovered and is at Pete and Cathy Langley’s foundry for repairs.

This moment of chaos presents us with an opportunity.

Reading Lily Haight’s excellent series about the Chetzemoka Trail these last two months, Leader readers have been learning the less-sanitized history of the S’Klallam leader who saved lives by urging his people to make way for white settlement of his homeland rather than make war.

In doing so, he found the way to make a victory for his nation and for the U.S.A.

Certainly at Memorial Field we should continue to pay tribute to the 50 Jefferson County soldiers from Anderson through Wimberly who sacrificed their lives in the two World Wars. Their sacrifice was the original focus of the memorial plaque and cannons. But it would be appropriate to add to that list our war dead from Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

And now we know Memorial Field holds more than a symbolic marker of graves. The recent work on the light system turned up human remains deep in the churned fill that has been graded back and forth on that site since the U.S. Government ordered qatay village destroyed by fire.

We know Port Townsend’s early Chinatown also was burned on that site.

Is there a way to amend the plaque to give passersby a full accounting of lives that went before ours that have made Port Townsend what it is today?

Let’s not miss this opportunity for an honest accounting of the price of progress. We would make ourselves an unusual place if we embraced all of our histories in that shared gathering-ground.

Jefferson County was focused on the two World Wars when the field was dedicated in May of 1948 as a tribute to those whose deaths were a fresh scar on the psyches of local families. Volunteers have maintained and improved the field from time to time when tax dollars weren’t available to install irrigation and other improvements, so they are important stakeholders and the kin of our war-dead cannot be disrespected.

But also paying taxes for Memorial Field’s upkeep have been S’Klallam families whose homes were burned off the site in 1871 and relatives of those who lost all in the fire that swept the Chinese District in 1900.

Aren’t we big enough to remember all that as we file into the bleachers for a game of football or softball, without diminishing our gratitude for soldiers who have protected our way of life?

If you have ideas about this, contact your county commission to urge a revision to the plaque, or to object to any revisions:

The Leader’s Editorials are the opinion of the Editorial Board: Publisher Lloyd Mullen; co-owner Louis Mullen; Editor Dean Miller and Leader readers.