Perverted law causes conflict.
~Frédéric Bastiat
[Much thanks to the The Valley Breeze for publishing this essay on May 9, 2012. The Valley Breeze is a northern Rhode Island newspaper servicing eleven towns, distributing 62,500 community newspapers in 5 distinct, weekly local editions. Minor edits made in this version do not modify content as it was published in TVB.]
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A story unfolds in the city of Woonsocket, RI, a city on the brink of bankruptcy, a story that is as much about the body politic as it is about religious beliefs, the Constitution of the United States of America, freedoms granted under such Constitution, and forces that endeavor to ensure those freedoms.
A story, too, about a just, rational and moral society, and a small parcel of real estate in Woonsocket which, for the most part, has gone unnoticed by its residents, save for a group of firefighters, and bloodlines of those for whom it was erected. The real estate: a corroding concrete monument topped with a white cross. Constructed in 1921 by a family honoring their beloved William Jolicoeur—a Christian, a WWI soldier, and one of the 53,000 plus members of the American Expeditionary Forces that were killed upon Europe's battlefields—the once nearly forgotten monument is now garnering national attention, and as such, is about to be improved, at no cost other than time, muscle ache and sweat, by those people who believe in a just, rational and moral society, and the preservation of such society, as fractured as it may be.
What has become a heated dispute on the streets and in the papers raises a simple question: Can a plain white cross on a ninety-one year old war monument in a forsaken parking lot in Woonsocket, RI survive the political left, atheistic scrutiny of those it offends?
Deep beneath the surface of this story lies another story, an uncomfortable truth about our just, rational and moral society, the state of our national psyche, human nature itself. But to fully understand the scope of the dispute, one must understand the history behind the monument topped with a white cross; a history that dates back to the signing of the Constitution, to the moment the monument was unveiled, to the day down-on-its-luck Woonsocket became unwittingly entangled, like many others, in a long-standing, freethinkers' crusade.
In 1921, when the monument was erected in Woonsocket on a center medium slab of Cumberland Hill Road, above the dark, thundering waters of the Blackstone River, a river of which powered the many textile mills scattered throughout the city, before the closings of those mills and long before the industrious city fell to hard times, the city thrummed with activity and commerce. It flourished with a healthy population of Catholic, French-Canadian immigrants who were drawn there, mainly, to work in the mills that lined both sides of the snaking River. For both the elite and working class people, social life centered around Woonsocket's churches; they were God-fearing, law-abiding citizens, proud of their heritage and adopted homeland.
When the cross-topped monument was rededicated in May of 1953 to three brothers from Woonsocket who lost their lives in the battles of World War II, a new plaque was placed upon the grey stone base, honoring the veterans of both wars. After the floods of 1954, Cumberland Hill Road was reconfigured, setting it back further from the river, and the unaltered monument would find itself situate still upon the medium, but in what became the northern end of the parking lot of Woonsocket's Fire Station No. 2.
Before the crumbling monument amassed national attention and two days prior to the monument's dedication by a decorated French Marshall, President Harding, in an elaborate ceremony in Washington, D.C. on November 11, 1921 (America's first Armistice Day) paid tribute to the Unknown Soldier with a poignant speech, and a symbolic, pale tomb at Arlington National Cemetery. The tomb: a white marble sarcophagus resting on the grave in which remains of unknown soldiers are buried. At the front elevation of the tomb, as the same was augmented in 1931, encased by the relief of an open laurel wreath are the words "The Unknown Soldier." Inscribed on the Tomb of the Unknowns are wreaths representing major battles of the First World War, and the words:
HERE RESTS IN
HONORED GLORY
AN AMERICAN
SOLDIER
KNOWN BUT TO GOD
Harding's speech was no less than a beautifully crafted, emotional work of art. In it, he stated, among other things, "In the death gloom of gas, the bursting of shells and rain of bullets, men face more intimately the great God over all, their souls are aflame, and consciousness expands and hearts are searched. With the din of battle, the glow of conflict, and the supreme trial of courage, come involuntarily the hurried appraisal of life and the contemplation of death’s great mystery. On the threshold of eternity, many a soldier, I can well believe, wondered how his ebbing blood would color the stream of human life, flowing on after his sacrifice…”
Two days later, a Sunday evening, in Woonsocket, at the same monument in the center of the road—to be named that day as Place Jolicoeur (meaning "Place of Happy Hearts")—and after an extravagant parade where thousands of people stood in unbroken line across its route, mills brilliantly illuminated and whistles blowing, the French Marshall Ferdinand Foch and his party descended upon Place Jolicoeur. The band struck up France's national anthem, La Marseillaise, the crowd joined in singing, and Marshal Foch dedicated the rose and chrysanthemum embellished monument, a post at the time, as the spot that would mark a fitting tribute to the fallen soldier.
Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander of all Allied forces in the Great War, the First World War, the war that would end empires, had been beckoned to Woonsocket by its leaders. Foch was the man who led the Allied armies to victory in France's battlefields. He was to tour the nation in the fall of 1921, and his presence in Woonsocket would effectively make the monument an historic relic, regarded as a hard-set portal to Europe's allies.
