Garden clubs to place Blue Star
CENTER TWP — The Butler Garden Club and Southern Butler County Garden Club are teaming up to dedicate a Blue Star Memorial Marker later this month at the new Abie Abraham VA Clinic at 353 N. Duffy Road.
It will be placed adjacent to the new facility's front entrance.
According to Karen Faust, president of the Southern Butler County Garden Club, the marker will be dedicated at 10 a.m. Sept. 26.
“This is a National Garden Club project and will be only the second one installed in Butler County. The other is at the current VA facility,” said Faust.
Faust said, “Polly Berginc (immediate past president of the Butler Garden Club) and I had a vision to do this about 18 months ago.”
“We are so fortunate for the cooperation of the VA allowing this memorial marker to be installed,” Faust said.
“She and I share a passion for veterans,” said Faust. “I grew up in Washington, D.C. I was married 30 days when my husband went to Vietnam.
“Her father was a World War II veteran who will be there for the dedication,” Faust said.
Both Berginc's father, John Twerdock, and Harold Faust will lay a wreath at the memorial during the dedication, she said.
“It's been our dream to have this marker as a tribute to veterans past, present and future,” Faust said.
“The sign is 8 feet tall and made of aluminum,” said Rin Babson, the Blue Star marker chairman for Western Pennsylvania and member of the Fox Chapel Garden Club.
Babson said the Blue Star Marker program started in 1945 after World War II in New Jersey and was developed by the National Garden Clubs.
The program began with the planting of dogwood trees by the New Jersey Council of Garden Clubs as a living memorial to World War II veterans.
In 1945 the-then National Council of State Garden Clubs adopted this program and began a Blue Star Highway System.
“There are two different kinds: highway markers and memorial markers for specific sites, such as VA hospitals,” Babson said.
“They cost about $1,500 apiece,” she said.
Babson added, “There are close to 3,000 across the United States.”
She said there are Blue Star Markers at every plaza on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and at the turnpike headquarters.
Faust said her club and the Butler Garden Club plan to alternate placing a wreath at the marker on Veterans Day and Memorial Day.
