MARTINSBURG/BLAIR COUNTY, Pa — In Blair County today, the Town of Martinsburg paid homage to a group of Civil War heroes who fought in the Battle of Gettysburg.
70 Union soldiers from the Morrisons Cove Area were honored with a memorial in Morrisons Cove Memorial Park on Saturday.
Former Martinsburg Borough Manager Randy Stoltz spent several years researching and planning to make this possible.
“I’m very excited to see this day come, it’s been two years in the the making, we got started two years ago and then COVID kind of slowed everything down," he said. "We ordered the, uh, polished black granite back in February and it got delayed and lost and it finally, finally came.”
James Levi Roush is one of the names inscribed in the memorial, and his great grandson Bryan Roush was happy to see the unveiling.
“Oh, this is very exciting, very, very great to see this honor, to see all our local heroes...people...it’s great to see the monument going up when so many are coming down,” he said.
Remnants of past wars are slowly being removed for various reasons, and Stoltz says this particular park, with all its remnants of glory, lost some of its heritage as well.
“World War II came along and they took all of the metal, they took the brass shells, they took the guns and melted them down for the metal drive for World War II, so we lost all of that.”
But despite those losses, today was a day to celebrate and remember.
“Ah, there’s a lot of emotions but it’s just, just a great day,” Roush said.
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