One of the goals of this site is to highlight the Edison connection of the 116 names on the plaque. When I started this project, the assumption was that they were all graduates from the school. That proved to be incorrect. The list appears to include anyone that attended Edison at any point and subsequently died in service. For those that graduated, the connection is easy to make. There is usually a Senior picture in the yearbook, and a mention in the newspaper when a death notice, or obituary was published. For those that withdrew, it has been more difficult. The Edison Record student newspaper reported the deaths of some of the students that had withdrawn. The death notice or obituary often mentions that the person attended Edison as well. For some of the 116 people, the only connection to Edison found to date is their inclusion in the “In Memoriam” section of the 1946 Wizard yearbook (105 names) or their inclusion on the plaque itself.
The plaque that contains the names of the 116 Tommies killed in service to the country during World War 2 was dedicated on Memorial Day in 1949. As this page from the 1949 Wizard yearbook described, the plaque was a part of a larger memorial to those who died.
How did the organizers of the monument determine who the 116 people were?
As best as can be determined, it was a combination of official school records, government records, and what we would call today, crowdsourcing.
The Edison Record newspaper started writing articles about the war dead in 1943.
They did not always have the correct information. Clarence La Pointe, the last man on the list, did not die in the war. He died on 10Sep2001 at the age of 81.
There was a banner hung in the school that contained a gold star with a number below it, and a blue star with a number below it. The gold star was the number of Tommies that had died in the war, and the blue start was the number of Tommies in uniform. The banner appeared to be updated periodically
The Record frequently covered the war wounded and war dead in its pages. Even after the war was over.
In late 1948 and early 1949, the school was compiling the list of war dead to include in the memorial. A month prior to the dedication of the plaque, the Edison Record included an article asking for the names of Tommies that died in the war that were not included on the list that had been compiled up to that point.
The Record had 114 of the 116 names listed. Missing were Clayton Fitzgerald and Gordon Zimmer. They appear to be the last 2 names added to the plaque.
Edison Heroes 