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War memorial (all wars) · Dedicated May 1986

Veterans Memorial (Pottsville Joint Veterans Council, 1986)

Location
Gen. George A. Joulwan Park, Greenwood Hill (Burns & Anderson Sts.), Pottsville, PA
Dedicated
May 1986
Status
Extant (relocated)
Coordinates
40.69219, -76.18661 · Open in Maps

The Veterans Memorial at Greenwood Hill is a late-20th-century community war memorial erected in 1986 to honor all Pottsville-area men and women who served in the nation’s wars. A three-paneled stone monument, it stands a few steps from the Congressional Medal of Honor Memorial, the two forming the Greenwood Hill veterans’ grouping in northeast Pottsville.

All who served — and one who did not return

The memorial is dedicated broadly “in honor of all men & women who served in” the major conflicts of the 20th century — World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and all other endeavors — functioning as the city’s general, all-wars tribute, distinct from the single-war Civil War and Spanish-American War monuments downtown.

A plaque on the reverse narrows that universal dedication to a single, specific loss:

“In memory of Frederick W. Schaeffer, Sgt., ‘B’ Co., First Air Cavalry — first Pottsville soldier killed in Viet Nam, June 19, 1967.”

The Pottsville Republican reported Sgt. Frederick W. Schaeffer’s death on its front page of June 21, 1967. He was a 22-year-old Army sergeant who had shipped to Vietnam in October 1966 and was killed in combat on June 19, 1967; born in York, Pennsylvania, he was a graduate of St. Patrick’s High School in Pottsville. The reverse plaque thus commemorates a specific, verifiable local loss — the city’s first of the Vietnam War.

Erection, dedication, and relocation

The memorial was erected in 1986 by the Pottsville Joint Veterans Council, as recorded on its inscription, and dedicated in May 1986 at the city’s Memorial Day ceremony in Garfield Square — its original downtown location, alongside the 1891 Soldiers’ Monument and the 1927 Hiker. In 2007 the City of Pottsville and the Joint Veterans Council created a consolidated veterans memorial at the 12.5-acre Gen. George A. Joulwan Park; as part of that project the 1986 monument was moved from Garfield Square to Joulwan Park in September 2007, and a new Medal of Honor Memorial was dedicated beside it that November. That relocation is why it now stands at Greenwood Hill rather than downtown.

(Still genuinely open: the name of the original designer/fabricator of the 1986 stone, recoverable from the full May 1986 dedication coverage or the Joint Veterans Council’s records.)

Significance

As the newest monument in the Pottsville index, the 1986 Veterans Memorial extends the city’s commemorative tradition from the 1850s Henry Clay column into the late 20th century. Its pairing of a broad “all who served” dedication with the named remembrance of the first local Vietnam casualty captures a distinctly modern memorial sensibility — honoring collective service while insisting that individual sacrifice not be lost in the aggregate.

Sources

Frequently asked

Whom does the 1986 Veterans Memorial honor?
It is dedicated to all who served in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and other endeavors. A plaque on its reverse names Sgt. Frederick W. Schaeffer of 'B' Co., First Air Cavalry — identified as the first Pottsville soldier killed in Vietnam, on June 19, 1967.
Why does it now stand at Greenwood Hill?
It was dedicated in May 1986 at Garfield Square, where it stood for 21 years, then relocated to Gen. George A. Joulwan Park as part of the 2007 veterans-memorial project — placed a few steps from the Medal of Honor Memorial dedicated that November.

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