A Veterans Day event is planned for Wednesday, Nov. 11, at 11 a.m. at the Honor Roll war memorial in front of the town hall.

The event will include placing a wreath to honor all veterans, and a speaker from the VFW or the United Veterans Council in town.

This is likely the last year the event will be held at the memorial in front of the town hall, as work has already started on a new veterans memorial garden located in an area between the town hall and the public library.

According to officials, $8,000 has already been committed for the endeavor, and another $32,000 is still needed to create the memorial wall, install the walkway, and provide lighting and landscaping.

The new memorial will provide a central location to honor all veterans in Barrington from the 20 and 21st centuries and on. Both garden clubs in town — Hameho Garden Club and the Barrington Garden Club — will be planting flowers at the site.

When finished, the area will include a memorial marker, flagpole, informational plaque, and stone work that matches the stone work on the town hall. Fundraising letters are going out now to businesses, banks, and veterans in town.

“The memorial fund-raising drive is heating up now,” said Bill Groves, the Post Commander of VFW 9742. “We’re just really starting to get into the fund-raising.”

So far, a new, 55-foot flagpole is in place at the site, in the same area where a flagpole once stood when the town hall was built in 1887. Also, the World War I memorial stone has been moved from its original site in front of the town hall to its new location. Other work is expected to take place soon.

Project took time

Plans have been underway for the veterans memorial garden for years.

Mike Tripp, retired Marine Corps Vietnam veteran and the treasurer of the United Veterans Council and the quartermaster of the local VFW, said the project took time.

“We submitted a number of different plans over the course of a couple of years,” he said. “I think it’s definitely an enhancement to the town hall property.”

Plans to put the memorial at the southwest corner of the Barrington Town Hall were approved a year ago, in the fall of 2008, but there was much discussion and even contention leading up to that decision. In the fall of 2006, two members of American Legion Post No. 8 in Barrington, Fred Thompson and Joe Andreozzi, wrote a letter to the editor questioning the necessity of building a new memorial in town. They listed 13 other memorials already in place in town.

At about the same time, Robert Robertson, president of the Barrington Preservation Society, expressed concern that the proposed location for the memorial — which is now the approved site — would negatively impact a historically sensitive area. At the time he said the memorial would disturb the landscaping for a site listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an area which includes the property stretching from Prince’s Hill Cemetery south to the Peck Building.

Retired Navy Captain Jim Quinn said the new location provides a central place for reflection in an area frequently visited by townspeople. He said some of the other veterans’ memorials in town are in out-of-the-way places.

“This gives us a single area or repository you can view the contributions veterans have made to our town. It shows what the citizens of Barrington have contributed in the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,” he said.

The new memorial will include a walkway that leads from the town hall to the Peck Center where the library is located.

“It’s kind of like walking from the seat of government to a repository of history,” Mr. Quinn said.