Riverhead’s World War Memorial honors veterans and casualties of ‘the war to end all wars’

For more than a century, the townsfolk of Riverhead have gathered at the granite monument bearing a bronze tablet on which are engraved the 304 names of Riverhead men who served their country in the Great War, which we now know as World War I.

They were soldiers, sailors, marines, Red Cross ambulance drivers, YMCA volunteers and civilian Army specialist employees. Their surnames are familiar to locals to this day: Boden, Cheshire, Conklin, Danowski, Downs, Edwards, Fanning, Hallock, Howell, Hulse, Kratoville, Lane, Linnen, Prusinowski, Reeve, Sendlewski, Tuthill, Wells, Young. The familiarity is a testament to the small-town nature of this town, still, a century later — though it’s grown from a population of 5,753 people in 1920 to about 35,000 today.

Nine of the men whose names are inscribed on the plaque made the supreme sacrifice: Clifford L. Bess, Everett F. Benjamin, Joseph Boncyzk, Charles Chituk, John Haupt, Cornelius J. Keenan, Van Rensselaer D. Skidmore, George L. Tuthill and Anton Zakas. 

The monument is a massive granite block — 5 1/2 by 6 feet — purchased by the town in 1919 from Frank H. Hill & Bros. for $405. The bronze tablet was the work of J.W. Fiske Co. purchased by the town at a cost of $418, according to Riverhead Town Board minutes. (That’s $7,529 and $7,771, respectively, in 2024 dollars.) 

In 2001, a gas-powered torch was donated and installed by Frederick Cowan and Company, a manufacturer of industrial burner equipment located on Kroemer Avenue in Riverhead. The company engineered the equipment that keeps the eternal flame burning and performs regular maintenance.

MORE COVERAGE: Riverhead’s eternal flame burns brightly once more

The World War monument was initially erected on the northwest corner of Griffing Avenue and West Main Street, then the front lawn of the Suffolk County Historical Society. 

The town intended to dedicate the monument on the first Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1919‚ the one-year anniversary of the end of the Great War, but it wasn’t ready in time. 

It was instead unveiled on Memorial Day, 1920, with great fanfare. A very special guest attended the unveiling in Riverhead and gave a speech to “an immense crowd,” according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle: Col. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., son of the late President Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt called the monument “perfectly splendid,” according to the newspaper report, and said he had “no idea Riverhead had such a large list of service men.”

“If the sacrifices made in the Revolutionary War, the Spanish War, the Civil War and the war just ended mean anything, they mean a heritage to all in the future, a responsibility on you and on me to see that what they did and what they fought for bears fruit and that the country gets what they fought for and that the country goes forward in the way they wished and hoped,” Roosevelt told the crowd, according to the report in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

The monument was relocated in 1926 to its current site on the corner of West Main and Court streets, on a parcel donated to the historical society by Alice Perkins, where the historical society’s museum was later built. 

The War Memorial monument, like the original Armistice Day holiday, which we now celebrate as Veterans Day, commemorates the end of the first global-scale war, known at the time as the “Great War,” and at the time called “the war to end all wars.” 

Armistice Day marks the day a truce agreement, called an armistice, was signed by the Allies and the Central Powers. 

When word of the armistice arrived, Riverhead residents got together that very day to plan a victory celebration. They met in the directors’ room of the Suffolk County National Bank and planned “an elaborate celebration” to be held the following week, with two big parades, a rally, prayer services and a victory ball.

The County Review newspaper reported that more than 5,000 people attended the celebration, which it described as “over the top.”

MORE COVERAGE: With 300 native sons fighting in Europe, Riverhead celebrated the armistice with parades, parties and prayers (Nov. 10, 2018)

When the U.S. entered the war in the spring of 1917, 300 Riverhead men from all walks of life answered their nation’s call to battle and enlisted in the armed forces. Hundreds more registered for the draft. 

The entire town mobilized for the war effort, purchasing war savings certificates to help fund the military effort and working overtime — even plowing fields by searchlight at night — to grow extra crops to feed the troops. Prison labor was used in the fields. The sheriff appointed more than 1,500 special deputies to act as an organized home guard.