Fairfield Boy Scouts Remember Fallen Soldiers, Sailors in New York

Editor's note: The following news release was submitted by Maureen Graney, a committee member and Hiking Merit Badge counselor of Boy Scouts of America Troop 10, which is affiliated with First Presbyterian Church in Fairfield.

Fairfield’s BSA Troop 10 honored the nation’s fallen sailors and soldiers with song, a reading, a prayer and an offering of flowers at the Sailors and Soldiers Monument on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on Sunday.

Senior scouts were in New York visiting the Civil War monuments and memorials in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Their walking route spanned 20 miles, completing the final requirement of their Hiking Merit Badge. The boys began at Harlem-125th Street and ended near Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Their path took them across the Brooklyn Bridge. All boys walked 20 miles.

The interfaith memorial service was planned and delivered by Senior Patrol Leader Benjamin Graney Green, who opened the ceremony with his own brief prayer, “Words for the Brave.”

In the name of their country

These men and women fought

And gladly they have died for her

Never for themselves a thought.

“Our armed forces really do a lot for us,” Graney Green said. “It is time we paid tribute to them.”

The hike route was mapped by Assistant Senior Patrol Leader Steven Belitzky. Also hiking were Patrol Leader Matthew Wojnoski and Assistant Patrol Leader Jared Sales. Joining the group for the second half of the hike was new scout William Graney Green.

Connecticut’s BSA Troop 10, chartered by the First Presbyterian Church in Fairfield, is Connecticut’s oldest Boy Scout troop, founded in 1911.

In addition to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, some of the monuments visited by the scouts included the General Grant National Memorial, the statue of General Daniel Butterfield in Sakura Park, the 7th Regiment Memorial in Central Park, the General William Tecumseh Sherman equestrian monument in Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza, the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut Monument in Madison Square Park, the statue of President Abraham Lincoln in Union Square, the statue of U.S.S. Monitor designer John Ericsson in Battery Park, the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, and the statue of Lincoln in Concert Grove in Prospect Park.

BSA Troop 10 is planning a trip to Gettysburg in July to honor the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

Submitted by Maureen Graney of Boy Scouts of America Troop 10