Red Hook Memorial Park to get fresh look for Veterans Day

RED HOOK, N.Y. – The village’s Memorial Park is a 260-foot-long section of landscaped green space that has a 60-by-20-foot area maintained by VFW Post 7765 as a tribute to military personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice.

VFW member Dave Feroe gave an update on improvements to the small park that carries a large history, during a meeting with Village Board members last week.

“There are two new benches being installed on a larger concrete slab,” he said. “There are scrubs being removed to open up the book of the memorial.”

Feroe said the work is expected to be done by Veterans Day at a cost of $3,800. He said the effort to keep the site trim started after recent ceremonies drew large audiences.

“We were at a (VFW) meeting…and said we needed a couple more benches because on Memorial Day we had so many people,” he said.

The location offers a place of solitude along North Broadway/U.S. Route 9 on 0.83 acres that was donated by the Cookingham family on April 10, 1942. It also includes an area of flowering plants that is maintained by the Old Dutch Garden Club.

Officials said there will be some scrubs that will be removed but some of the trees have come to have a sentimental significance.

“There are two weeping cherry trees there that we’d like to have as a sentry over the marble monument,” Feroe said.

Feroe served in the U.S. Army from 1969-72 and said he feels a deep sense of family tradition that comes from serving in the military.

“This is all about American heritage,” he said.

Feroe said that there are families in the town that have a long tradition of service in the armed forces.

“I go back to the Palatine move in the 1500s when they brought the Feroe clan over from Germany,” he said.

“There’s a Feroe Avenue in Tivoli,” he said. “Col. Feroe trained Minute Men at the post office in Rhinebeck for the revolution. I have a great, great, great-grandfather who helped string the chain across the Hudson to keep the British from coming up, my grandfather in World War I was in the Signal Corp up and down France on the railroad artillery, my father (was) in World War II and Korea, and for me Vietnam.”