raised and then lowered to half-mast for the day. The flags involved were the US flag, with the POW/MIA flag flying below it; the flags of New York, Pennsylvania, and Arizona; the flags of the five branches of the US armed forces; and flags representing police officers and firefighters. The yearly ceremony includes speeches, music, rifle volleys, taps, and a military flyover. The flags are flown daily, except in inclement weather, and the Elks and other sponsoring organiza- tions donate $250 to the memorial each year to help pay for flag and plaza maintenance.
an annual commemoration ceremony. This past year, on the tenth anniver- sary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, about one thousand citizens attended the Sunday ceremony at the memorial, and during the event, attendees watched as twelve flags, flying from eleven flagpoles, were
US Navy veteran and PER Robert Piché, who has been the Americanism Committee chairman since 2006, was one of the moving forces behind the creation of the 9/11 memorial. He believed that the lodge needed to do something more than host an in-house ceremony on an annual basis to remember the events of September 11. “Three of us approached our city council and asked if we could build some kind of memorial and have a public ceremony,” Piché recalls. “After they approved our plans, we went to every fraternal organization in the city and asked them to join the Elks in building a plaza with eleven flagpoles at London Bridge Beach.”
The Veterans Service Committee, like the Americanism Committee, is also highly visible in the lodge and is active in dozens of events and projects.
One such project, a forty-five-minute video dedicated to honoring the lodge’s living WW II veterans, was under- taken by Veterans Service Committee Chairman Buford Watts.
Watts, a US Marine Corps veteran who was wounded in Vietnam, worked for 250 hours to produce the video presentation. He began planning this tribute to the lodge’s living WW II veterans about five years ago, after several lodge members who were WW II veterans died. He was interested in knowing how many living WW II veterans the lodge had and discovered that it had ninety-three.
The final video presentation, which was shown following a special dinner given to honor lodge veterans, showed photographs of the lodge’s living WW II veterans and also showed them in military uniform. The video was narrated and set to music, and as Watts says, “The crowd went crazy because they knew all these guys.” Watts has produced four subse- quent videos, each with a different military theme, and his wife, Diane, has decorated the tables and dining room for five Veterans Day dinners in a row. The $15 per plate events are always sold out. Some other projects of the Veterans Service Committee include raising money to send Elks veterans on Honor Flights to Washing- ton, DC, and visiting patients at the Prescott VA medical facility. Last Christmas alone, Watts delivered
l Pictured with PER and WW II veteran Leo Arsenault (left) and PER and WW II veteran Joe Letteriello (center) is Veterans Service Committee Chairman Buford Watts, who made a video presentation about the lodge’s WW II veterans.
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