Old Lyme OKs Plaques Honoring Service Members, Final Location Still Uncertain

OLD LYME — The nonprofit Duck River Garden Club this week secured permission from the Board of Selectmen to install memorials for U.S. service members, though the location has not yet been finalized. 

Club member Maryellen Basham at a special selectmen’s meeting Monday said the group hopes to install a Blue Star Memorial and a Gold Star Memorial in front of the large conifer tree on the left side of Memorial Town Hall. The national markers are a tribute to those who served in the U.S. military and those who died.  

The Blue Star and Gold Star programs through National Garden Clubs, Inc. are inspired by service flags displayed by families during World War II with blue stars for loved ones serving and gold stars for those killed in action. 

Basham said Old Lyme would become one of only three municipalities in Connecticut to host a Gold Star marker if approved.

To make sure the markers can be installed in time for celebrations of the United States’ 250th anniversary in July, selectmen voted unanimously to authorize the Duck River Garden Club to purchase the signs and for First Selectwoman Martha Shoemaker to sign off on the club’s application to the national program. 

Basham said the garden club’s cost for the markers, currently set at $4,800, is expected to increase after the new year. She estimated delivery could take up to 26 weeks. 

The placement still has to be approved by the town’s Historic District Commission. But Shoemaker supported moving the project forward without specifying a location for the markers. 

“If they won’t agree to put them here, we will find a place for you to put them,” she said.

The proposed markers are 7 feet, 6 inches tall, with an additional 3 feet underground. Placement would about 15 feet from the Lyme Street sidewalk and 14 feet from the walkway along the side of the building. 

Shoemaker said she will notify utility-marking services to ensure the installation doesn’t interfere with underground lines.

Basham in a written request to selectmen identified the town hall as the ideal location because it is the town’s solemn civic center. 

“These markers will enhance the beauty of our municipal grounds while expressing our town’s deep and enduring gratitude to those who serve and the families who bear the greatest sacrifice,” Basham wrote. 

She told selectmen the club chose the town hall location after evaluating other possibilities, including the green at the corner of Sill Lane and Boston Post Road. The area features historical markers including 10 recently added Witness Stones honoring the lives of enslaved people. 

Basham said the large existing conifer on the town hall property would provide “a great backdrop” to the markers. The club originally hoped to plant a dogwood – which evokes the trees used by the New Jersey Council of Garden Clubs in 1944 as a living memorial to veterans of World War II – but Basham said the existing tree makes new planting unnecessary.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to correct the reference to the number of Gold Star markers in the state.