Ceremonies set for Veterans Memorial Park; road closure planned

Veterans Highway (Route 413) will be closed between Highland Park Entrance (Google Maps: Hollow Road) and Trenton Road in Middletown Township between 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 26, in conjunction with the dedication of the Lower Bucks County Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Veterans Memorial Park.
The memorial will honor sons of Bensalem, Bristol, Falls, Lower Makefield, Lower Southampton, Middletown, Newtown, Northampton, Upper Makefield, Upper Southampton, and Wrightstown townships and Bristol, Hulmeville, Langhorne, Langhorne Manor, Morrisville, Newtown, Penndel boroughs.
Middletown Township will operate shuttle buses from remote parking facilities at Carl Sandburg Middle School/Albert Schweitzer Elementary School, both at 30 Harmony Road in the Highland Park section of Levittown, and the Middletown Senior Center at 2140 Trenton Road in Levittown.
Attendants will be on site at the parking locations; lavatory facilities will be open at the Middletown Senior Center. Buses will begin running at 10:30 a.m.; the last return bus is expected to leave Veterans Memorial Park at 2 p.m.

The memorial dedication will begin at 11:30 a.m. Ceremonies will include: the 11-person Armed Forces Color Guard from the Military District of Washington, D.C.; a military helicopter flyover; tributes to the fallen from multiple Lower Bucks County Vietnam veterans and others; remarks by Abbe Godwin, sculptor of the statue that will be a focal point of the monument; and a roll call of Vietnam veterans in attendance and those whose names are inscribed on the memorial, as well as postwar casualties of Agent Orange.
Plans call for the 600-pound statue to be set in place on Friday, Sept. 24, and then shrouded until the Sunday, Sept. 26 ceremonies. Three years in the making, the memorial will include 95 names of servicemen from Lower Bucks County, including 94 killed in action and one missing in action.
The memorial sculpture has been created by Abbe Godwin. Godwin is known for creating the statue of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Gardens in Raleigh, N.C.; the Stephen Foster sculpture in the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the North Carolina Vietnam Veterans Memorial and others.
The cost of the memorial is being funded by state and local grants, and various fundraising efforts. Donations can be made at lbcvvm.org.

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