Studer Community Institute

5 things you may not know about Pensacola’s war memorials

May 25, 2015
/ Joe Vinson
/ training-development

1. The Confederate memorial is a copy of a copy

Before Memorial Day, there was Decoration Day, so named because Americans would gather to decorate the graves of fallen Civil War soldiers. In the 1880s, there was an effort to create a Florida state memorial to the Confederate dead in Tallahassee. When most of the fundraising originated in Pensacola, William Dudley Chipley decided to built the monument here instead, atop Gage (Palafox) Hill at a plaza newly named for Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The monument, honoring “the Uncrowned Heroes of the Southern Confederacy, whose joy was to suffer and die for a cause they believed to be just,” was dedicated on Jun. 17, 1891. The centerpiece was a towering, 22-foot granite column topped by an 8-foot statue of a Confederate soldier, slouched by defeat and holding his hat in folded arms. It was a near duplicate of an 1889 bronze sculpture located in Alexandria, Va., which in turn was based on an 1880 painting called “After Appomattox” by John Adams Elder. In the painting, the lone soldier is surveying the ruined battlefield where Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the war. For decades, Lee Square was home to an annual Decoration Day observance on Apr. 26. In 1967, the country’s various regional observances were merged into the national holiday of Memorial Day, now celebrated on the last Monday in May. [caption id="attachment_23866" align="aligncenter" width="850"]

The World War I memorial at Veterans Memorial Park was located on Garden Street until 1992[/caption]

2. The World War I memorial spent 64 years on Garden Street

Pensacola’s second memorial to fallen soldiers was dedicated on Nov. 11, 1928, the tenth anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. “A tribute to the men of Escambia County who served the United States and the Allies in the World War 1914-1918 and in loving memory of those who fell,” reads a plaque on the massive marble monument that now sits on the southern end of Veterans Memorial Park. G. J. Montague, who owned a Venetian stucco and decorative plaster business at 15 E. Intendencia St., donated the monument, originally located on West Garden Street. It was moved to its current location in 1992 when Veterans Memorial Park was established on the site of Admiral Mason Park. [caption id="attachment_23867" align="aligncenter" width="850"]

"The Wall South" is a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C.[/caption]

3. The Wall South almost didn’t get built

Veterans Memorial Park was dedicated on Oct. 24, 1992, with the unveiling of the Wall South, a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., that is etched with the names of the more than 58,000 U.S. service members who were killed or went missing in the Vietnam War. It was the result of years of fundraising and planning that nearly fell apart for several reasons. The Wall South was inspired by a traveling exhibition called The Moving Wall that stopped in Pensacola’s Seville Square for seven days in 1987. Struck by the emotional power of the exhibit, Vietnam veterans Lenny Collins and Nelson Wellborn led an effort to build a permanent replica of the memorial wall in Pensacola. In 1989, Jan Scruggs, the founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, supported the idea of the Wall South. However, he later wrote the Wall South Foundation that he had changed his mind. “I made a mistake by even considering any support for the project,” Scruggs said. “But the time’s come to bring it all to an end. There will be no cooperation from us.” Scruggs compared the venture to building “a copy of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the center of Pensacola’s business district,” and he threatened a legal battle over the copyright to the memorial. “I really don’t care what Jan Scruggs thinks,” Wellborn told the Pensacola News Journal at the time. Attorneys for the Wall South Foundation looked into the copyright and declared it would not be an issue. However, there was still the matter of money. By 1991, fundraising efforts were well shy of the $1.3 million price tag for the 66 granite panels. As a last ditch effort, State Senator W.D. Childers added a provision to the state budget that provided a $1 million grant to the project. [caption id="attachment_23868" align="aligncenter" width="850"]

For decades, this bench dedicated to the memory of George Lockwood was the only World War II memorial in Pensacola. It was moved to Veterans Memorial Park in 2002.[/caption]

4. The current WWII memorial incorporated the original WWII memorial

Before the World War II plaza at Veterans Memorial Park was dedicated on Nov. 16, 2002, there was another memorial to that war in Pensacola — a modest stone bench dedicated to the memory of George Lockwood. Lockwood, born on Feb. 8, 1924, was a local teenage boxing star who won several amateur boxing titles, including the Southeastern American Amateur Union and the Southern Golden Gloves. One of his only losses was against Sugar Ray Robinson at Madison Square Garden in New York. Lockwood was 17 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. With a signed permission letter from his father, he enlisted in the Navy just days later. He was Pensacola’s youngest recruit in the war, and the next year he became the city’s first casualty. On Aug. 9, 1942, Lockwood’s ship, the USS Vincennes, was sunk in the Battle of Savo Island. He managed to rescue another sailor from an explosion in the ship’s boiler room, but did not himself escape. His body was never recovered. Lockwood was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. According to his sister, Rita Golson, their father wore the medal close to his heart until his death. The stone bench in Lockwood’s memory was moved from its home on Palafox Street (near Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza) to be a part of the new World War II memorial in 2002. [caption id="attachment_23869" align="aligncenter" width="850"]

"Homecoming," by local sculptor Randy New, was added to Veterans Memorial Park in 2000.[/caption]

5. The little girl symbolizes the children of fallen soldiers

On the grassy hillock on the north side of the Wall South is a bronze statue of a little girl, entitled “Homecoming” and credited to the “Children of America’s Twentieth Century Heroes.” The statue is the work of area art teacher and sculptor Randy New, who also sculpted one of the statues in the Korean War memorial at Veterans Memorial Park. When New was 6 years old, his father, Lt. George New Jr., was killed in Vietnam. The statue of the girl — wearing an oversized helmet and clutching a doll — represents the children awaiting a parent gone off to war, many of whom never returned. New was inspired by a photo he took of his daughter, Savanna, while visiting Veterans Memorial Park in 1999. The sculpture was added on Veterans Day, 2000. “This was therapy,” New told the News Journal last year.

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