JULY 19-25, 2012
THE CENTRE COUNTY GAZETTE
PAGE 11
Photo provided by the Pennsylvania Military Museum
A VIEW OF the 28th Division Shrine in the mid to late 1920s shows the Asher memorial, left front, the Sigerfoos memorial, center, and the Anderson memorial, right.
Photo provided by the Pennsylvania Military Museum
THE MODERN 28th Division Shrine stands on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Military Museum.
Photo provided by the Pennsylvania Military Museum
Photo provided by the Pennsylvania Military Museum
THE OLD OFFICERS’ CLUB building was located on the West side of what is now the Pennsylvania Military Museum.
THE FIRST 28TH DIVISION monument, the Memorial to Company A of the 107th Machine Gun Regiment, has a tall cross on top that was brought back to Boalsburg from Europe after World War I.
Shrine tour explains Boalsburg’s ties to World War I By KAREN DABNEY For The Gazette
BOALSBURG — When museum educator Joe Horvath gives tours, he is often asked why the Pennsylvania Military Museum is located in the peaceful town of Boalsburg. To answer that question, he developed a new Sunday evening tour of the Pennsylvania National Guard 28th Division Shrine. Horvath said that the answer to that question is across the road from the museum at Boal Mansion. In 1898, Theodore Davis Boal, a wealthy Washington, D.C., architect, bought the mansion from his aunt as summer home and enlarged it. Anticipating America’s entry into World War I,
Boal founded Camp Boal on his estate and recruited men to form a volunteer cavalry machine gun unit. President Wilson opposed the idea of using volunteer militia, and wanted to use only professional troops. Boal knew Theodore Roosevelt and Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, and through them was able to get his troop federalized and sent to the Mexican Border in September 1916 to join the Army’s unsuccessful attempt to catch Mexican Revolutionary General Pancho Villa. When the United States joined World War I, Boal’s unit was shipped to France as part of the 28th Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard. Horvath began the tour with
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an introduction in front of the museum, and led the tour group to the 28th Division Shrine Complex beside the museum. He explained that the locations of the individual regimental monuments beside Spring Creek correspond to the placement of the 28th Division regiments before the Meuse-Argonne Offensive near Verdun, France during World War I. The four infantry regiments, 109 through 112, were positioned along the Vesle River, with the two artillery regiments, 107 and 108, behind them. Across Spring Creek from the regimental monuments is the Officers Memory Wall, inscribed with the names of 115 of the 28th Division officers who died in World War I. Horvath said many
more officers died in action, but these were the ones that family and friends paid to have inscribed. The trees behind the wall symbolize the Argonne Forest. He also talked about the other monuments at the shrine, including the first monument, the memorial to Company A of the 107th Machine Gun Regiment, which was moved from in front of Boal Mansion to its current location in the 28th Division Shrine. After a brief walking tour of the shrine, Horvath led the group inside to the museum’s theater for a PowerPoint slide show presentation of how the site evolved as an officers’ club and continued as a cavalry post through the 1920s and 1930s. Using a map of the grounds, Horvath pointed
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out the locations of the original buildings and other features, including the officers’ club, the tennis courts, the armory, a swimming pond, and the horse stables. He showed many “then and now” photographs, followed by a historic and sometimes humorous 20-minute movie of the 28th Division officers’ 1927 reunion on the grounds of the officers’ club, which showed that not everyone obeyed Prohibition. The Shrine tours are held at 5:15 p.m. on Sundays through Aug. 19 at the Pennsylvania Military Museum on Business Route 322 in Boalsburg. Donations are accepted. For more information visit pamilitarymuseum.org or call (814) 466-6263.
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