The headstone of John Carter, who was a soldier in the Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783. Carter is buried in one of the 13 private cemeteries in New Canaan , appropriately located on Carter Street. (Julie Butler photo)
“Leave no man behind.”
This is the first and perhaps most important motto a member of the Armed Forces learns and takes to heart.
John Wilson, 18, an Eagle Scout from Troop 70 and a senior at St. Luke’s School, recently made sure that no veteran buried in the 41-acre Lakeview Cemetery in town was “left behind” — that their gravesite and their service to our country, doesn’t go unrecognized.
For his Eagle Scout project, John spent more than a year discovering and painstakingly cataloging who each veteran was and where they were laid to rest, so that no warrior’s grave went without a flag placed at it on Memorial Day, a tradition members of New Canaan’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 653 have performed for decades.
“A lot of scouts do building projects for local organizations, like the New Canaan Nature Center or the New Canaan Historical Society, things like that,” John said. “I thought it would be interesting to do something different.”
John’s mother, Frances, said she also encouraged him to do the veteran’s project in part as a “nice tribute” to her father — John’s grandfather — after whom he is named and who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
Finding the veterans
According to Peter Langenus, commander of the VFW Post 653, and a veteran of both the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm, Lakeview Cemetery does not keep a list of which veterans are buried there, or even where they are buried. The way the VFW has kept track of which gravesites to place a flag at each Memorial Day has traditionally been done by reading headstones or spotting G.I. markers (government-issued, flat markers in granite, marble or bronze). The flags are left in place until the next Memorial Day, which has also made it easier to know where to replace them.
“What John discovered is that a lot of sections of the cemetery were filled in with grass and leaves and such, and in some cases, there were no longer visible gravestones or markers,” Langenus, a former Troop 70 scoutmaster who first proposed the project to John, said. “Some of the graves are so old that rain, winter and time have erased the lettering.
“What he did was to create a map of the cemetery via Google Maps. He then ID’d all of the various sections in the cemetery, took what maps of it existed [one dates back to 1903] and — in some instances, had to correct them — and created an updated map for every section,” Langenus said.
The finished product is a book called “The Veterans of Lakeview Cemetery.” It lists vets from the Revolutionary and Civil wars, both World Wars, Korean, Vietnam and the Gulf wars alphabetically by last name, and includes the section where each is buried, the plot number, their rank, unit, branch of the military in which they served, date of birth and date of death, the conflict they were involved in, i.e. war, as well as comments, such as “Women’s Relief Corps,” or “Purple Heart.”
“John’s book is a remarkable piece of work,” Langenus said. “It is beyond unbelievable. This thing is so thought out. In the book, he even has a schematic for how we plan the Christmas wreath delivery to each veteran’s gravesite in December, and a separate one for how we do the flag delivery.”
Project details
John started doing the footwork for this project the summer after sophomore year and finished at the end of the summer before starting his senior year.
“I did the work around my school time and in spring and summer when there wasn’t snow on the ground, going through the cemetery finding markers and headstones, then finally putting the information gathered for the book together.”
John estimates that he and the others who helped him didn’t spend more than three hours per day walking, “but in total it took about 160 hours,” he said.
The work entailed either John, his family members or other volunteers walking the cemetery. “In some instances, we could rely on veteran markers that showed a vet was buried there, but for some of the older ones, that didn’t have markers, we had to read the headstones to see if it mentioned their military service,” he said. “So there was a lot of reading of gravestones. Lakeview didn’t keep track of who was a vet and the maps themselves that they did have weren’t great, so in many cases we either took their maps and added to them or we just made new maps for some of the sections where they didn’t have maps for, or that weren’t usable.”
John said usually one person would walk around with a sheet of paper where they would write down the name, date of birth, date of death, and type of military service, and another person would walk around with the map of the cemetery and mark where in each section each vet was buried.
“Within the map of the section were the plots, and we put a dot down wherever we had a veteran,” John said.
“We were short on the estimate on how many vets are in Lakeview,” Langenus said. “We thought it was in the high 600s to low-700s, beforehand. But thanks to John, we now know there are actually upwards of 830.”
John said that among the problems with knowing exactly how many veterans were in the cemetery “was that you would go to one of the sections in the way back and see about 10 vets who didn’t have flags,” he said. “So that’s one of the things Mr. Langenus made clear — he wanted to know how many vets were there and that they got a flag to be honored.”
Langenus was involved with the project from the start. A U.S. Army captain in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade in Vietnam and a colonel commanding the 318th Transportation Agency in 1990 during Operation Desert Storm, this project was particularly special to him.
“For veterans, in my opinion, their experience in combat is the most indelible part of their lives,” Langenus said. “And so, it is important to recognize that. To honor that.”
Private cemeteries
In addition to Lakeview Cemetery, there are 13 private ones scattered around town in which veterans of both foreign and domestic wars are also buried, one from as far back as the French and Indian War (1756-1763) and also a vet of the Mexican-American War. Each of the 66 vets’ gravesites in these cemeteries also gets an American flag on Memorial Day.
Langenus said that seven years ago, a New Canaan Girl Scout named Tyler Boston catalogued the war dead buried in these private cemeteries, which are located on Carter Street; one at the corner of Old Stamford Road and Old Studio Road; Silvermine Road across from Rilling Ridge Road; Sellecks Corner; one off of West Road called Church Hill Cemetery; Frogtown Road; Canoe Hill Road; Talmadge Hill Road; Parade Hill Road; Davenport Ridge Road; Ponus Ridge North; Valley Road No. 834; and Valley Road next to Silver Hill Hospital.
Between these cemeteries and Lakeview, Langenus said the VFW puts out about 950 flags.
“I am definitely proud of the project,” John said, “and I learned a lot about our town and the people in it just by walking through hundreds of years of graves. Each headstone would show a little bit of stories about the person buried there. It was interesting to see the types of people who lived in our town.”
While working on the project didn’t cause John to feel as if he wanted to pursue a career in the military himself, he said it nevertheless gave him a deeper appreciation for those who wear the uniform of the United States of America.
At last year’s Memorial Day ceremony at Lakeview Cemetery following the parade, guest speaker Capt. Leon Krolikowski of the New Canaan Police Department, said: “Memorial Day should not only be a day of picnics and parades — it should be a day to remember those who made our way of life possible by making the ultimate sacrifice … Let’s put the ‘memorial’ back into Memorial Day.”
Langenus agrees.
“When we first moved here, I was driving down Valley Road, saw a flag, saw a small cemetery, backed up and went in,” he said. “And in the back, there was a great big brass plate, with the name Major Charles D. Austin on it, and the way it read, I could tell that he — an Air Force major in the Vietnam War — wasn’t there, wasn’t buried there. You know what I mean?,” the fellow Vietnam vet’s eyes welled a little. “But he was still honored there nevertheless. The last thing you want to do is to not remember somebody. When you go out on a mission, the first two things kids want to know is: ‘Will I be left behind?’ And the second is: ‘Who is providing medical coverage?’ Forgetting a soldier or a Marine is like leaving them behind, and you don’t want to do that.”
John Wilson, 18, an Eagle Scout, in a section of Lakeview Cemetery where a number of a war veterans are buried, holding the book he created, “The Veterans of Lakeview Cemetery.” In it, he cataloged information on — and mapped out the gravesite — of every New Canaan vet. (Laureen Vellante photo)