Oak Park residents carry a rich history of wartime service. Village parks and institutions serve as resting places for monuments that memorialize local veterans and create a resonance beyond the United States’ day of celebration.
According to archival collections from the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest, and information on the Historical Marker Database, 16 monuments exist today commemorating local veterans ranging from the 1898 Spanish-American War to the Vietnam War between the 1950s and 1970s.
“The Elephant:” Oak Park Spanish-American War Memorial
In front of the main entrance to Ridgeland Common on Lake Street is an eight-ton boulder once known and admired for its rare formation.
According to narratives from a relative, an Oak Park family purchased the rock in 1894, then dubbed “the elephant,” and had it shipped to the village from Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin. Mrs. Walter G. Bentley gifted it to the park district board in 1924, knowing that OPRF High School wanted to acquire their Scoville Avenue property.
In 1928, the village converted the rock into a monument for local veterans of the Spanish-American War, Philippine Insurrection and Boxer Uprising in China. Dedicated on Armistice Day that year, the rock remains a local landmark.
Peace Triumphant: celebrating peace and honoring Oak Park’s war dead
A pinnacle of Scoville Park and noted as Oak Park’s town center, Peace Triumphant consists of three bronze figures that architect Gilbert Riswold said personified land, air and sea. They surround a larger granite figure uniting the three elements into achievement of peace.
The memorial includes the names of the 56 fallen, and an honor roll of the 2,446 total, Oak Park and River Forest residents who served in WWI.
In March 1921, the Oak Park River Forest War Memorial Committee raised funds for the memorial through popular subscription. Residents pledged more than $50,000 — or more than $875,000 today — for its creation.
The metropolitan Chicago radio station WLS broadcast Peace Triumphant’s dedication on Armistice Day in 1925. General Charles G. Dawes, vice president of the United States, was the guest of honor. Major General James G. Harbord delivered remarks.
The statue has since been rededicated annually and was last restored in 2009.
OPRF students who served
Inside the high school’s main entrance at 201 N. Scoville Ave. is a memorial for male students who served in WWI in 1917 and 1918. Dedicated in 1923 by the graduating class of 1921, the plaque has remained an element of the school’s history through multiple renovation projects.
OPRF refurbished the plaque as part of its 2022 “Imagine OPRF” plan that reconstructed numerous portions of the high school, including the main entrance.
Gold Star Men of the World War
On November 11, 1921, the Women’s Auxiliary of the American Legion erected five memorials in various Oak Park parks celebrating the service of male residents in WWI. Each memorial names a few local veterans, dubbed “Gold Star Men of the World War,” with individual elm trees planted for each of the men listed. The five memorials can be found in:
- Andersen Park, 824 Hayes Ave. This gold star plaque is located between Andersen Center and a flagpole.
- Carroll Park, 1125 S. Kenilworth Ave. This gold star plaque is adjacent to two other memorials, a flagpole in honor of WWII soldier Robert Emmett Murphy and an “honor roll” plaque of neighborhood men who fought in WWI.
- Field Park, 935 Woodbine Ave. This gold star plaque is located in the west central region of the park, next to the walkway opposite the Field Park Recreation Center.
- Longfellow Park, 630 S. Ridgeland Ave. This gold star plaque can be found on the western edge of the park, on the Ridgeland Avenue sidewalk between Jackson Boulevard and the Longfellow Center entrance. This marker includes Hedley Cooper, the rector of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church. Cooper is believed to be the first American clergyman to die in WWI.
- Stevenson Park, 49 Lake St. This gold star plaque is located in between the park’s main entrance and a side entrance to the community center.
A disputed Vietnam/Korean War memorial
In May 1987, Oak Park Village President Clifford Osborn asked the park district board for permission to affix two plaques to the east and west sides of the Peace Triumphant memorial in Scoville Park. The plaque would honor local veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars.
However, a dispute between Osborn and the village over the phrasing used on the plaques put those plans in trouble. According to reporting by Wednesday Journal, the park board unanimously approved a paraphrased version of the statement on the national Vietnam War monument in Washington, D.C., to be placed on the local plaques.
Osborn denounced the board’s decision as out of touch with the emotions of the two wars that he tried to convey in his proposed statement. Today, neither of the plaques rest on Peace Triumphant, but local Vietnam veterans are still memorialized.
The Moving Wall Veterans’ Memorial, a half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, D.C., has visited more than 1,300 cities since 1984, including Berwyn. In the names of more than 58,000 Vietnam veterans inscribed on the memorial, eight are from Oak Park.
