Photo of the Day: Korean War Memorial, Westfield, NJ

In October, while I was down in Westfield, NJ for the afternoon, my eye was drawn to a hillside near the traffic circle, where this railroad suburb has chosen to honor onetime residents in several American military conflicts: the Spanish-American War, World War II and Korea.

I think it might be worthwhile to highlight, in this brief description and the photo I took that day, the last of these, America’s so-called “Forgotten War, and the local servicemen who, as Abraham Lincoln put it at Gettysburg, gave “the last full measure of devotion” to duty, their comrades and country.

Westfield’s Korean War Memorial, dedicated in 2004, was created by a then-17-year-old high school senior, Kevin Devaney. The granite piece drew my eye not for its size but for its design: a cutout of Korea, a peninsula where, over three years, 6.8 million American men and women served. Approximately 54,200 of them died, with 33,700 of these occurring during combat.

The memorial honors three men who died within three months of each other:

* Charles A. Lipphardt, an army first lieutenant who, after serving in the South Pacific in WWII, returned to active duty in September 1950. Lipphardt, who died in February 1951, was awarded the Purple Heart, Combat Infantryman's Badge, Korean Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Korean War Service Medal.

* Richard R. Wilson, an army private first class, was listed as missing in action in January 1951.

* Griswold M. Hill Jr., a marine private first class, lost his life in March 1951.

Ranging in age from 24 to 30, this trio never had the chance for a normal life span. For many passersby in this busy downtown 70 years later, they might be merely names on a tablet. But they meant far more to their families and this community for years, and their sacrifice is worth recalling and honoring.

Photo of the Day: First United Methodist Church, Westfield NJ

In late October, while I was down for the afternoon in Westfield, NJ, an affluent suburb of New York, my eyes were drawn to First United Methodist Church, so much so that I took this picture. Even in this bustling downtown, near a railroad underpass, this structure commands attention as it overlooks the intersection of North Avenue West and East Broad Street.

But it’s not just because it’s on a slight rise over the traffic. This Greek Revival structure has, in its present form, stood on this spot since 1968. It replaced another building for this faith community that had lasted 92 years.

AddamsFest 2021 Concluding in Westfield, NJ

Early last week, finding myself in Westfield, NJ, I started wandering around the downtown of this railroad suburb of New York. Catching sight of the local theater, the Rialto, I was struck by the door illustrations of figures I knew from a TV sitcom of my childhood: Morticia, Gomez, Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, and Grandmama—i.e., the Addams Family. That ghoulish crew appears in the photo I took then that accompanies this post.

The Rialto, as it will be for the last time on Halloween today, was the center that day of AddamsFest2021, centered on the macabre genius of Westfield native Charles Addams, who created the above-mentioned figures in a series of cartoons for The New Yorker.

From that prestigious perch, Addams’ comically bent characters have gone on to appear in the Sixties series starring John Astin and Carolyn Jones as couple Gomez and Morticia; a pair of early 1990s films with Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston in the same roles; a Broadway musical; and, in the last couple of years, two animated features.

For the fourth year, Westfield celebrated Addams with a series of exhibits, family-themed events, and movie screenings (including Addams Family II, which premiered this past weekend at the Rialto). East Broad Street, for instance, became “Morticia Drive” for the past four weeks. There was also Morticia and Gomez's Mask-erade Ball, Charlie's Ale Garden, Addams Family Fun Day, talks on the origins of Addams’ artistry and his life in Westfield, and a joint exhibit of his work with that of “texturalist” Suzanne Heilmann.

When I walked into the Rialto for a peak at this exhibit, the theater included an artwork from Addams’ teens in the late 1920s that prefigured his later fascination with the creepy environment of the Addams family: “Dudley,” a life-size illustrated skeleton that resided for almost a century on the second floor of a barn on the town’s East Dudley Avenue before it was removed for this occasion.

Young Addams found plenty in the environment of Westfield to feed his future work, including cemeteries and scary old Victorian homes that led him to “stare at them for hours imagining the ghosts inside,” he recalled in a 1976 People Magazine profile.

The work of Addams, in a career spanning 50 years, now resides in the permanent collections of The New York Public Library and The Library of Congress. As seen in AddamsFest, Westfield is where it all started.