Friendly Opponents Become Enemies, Scene 1
As the war ended, villagers had established a Welcome Committee, to begin work on a War Memorial, and to plan a grand day of festivities, to be held once all the local soldiers were back. Enthusiasm was high, and many people volunteered. In consequence, the Committee was a large, unwieldy, grass-roots effort. Its leader, Joseph Steinert Jr., appears to have done a good job at making progress.
Things moved slower once people had to consider certain details, primarily the final list of those who were to be named on the memorial. There were several men over whom people disagreed strongly. For example, a villager who had manned a government shore artillery battery during the war, and thus had been exempted from military service - had he not served his country as it decided he should?
Look familiar? This was the original Welcome Committee
proposal for the War Memorial, which was used to garner
community approval and to solicit funds for creating it.
Huntington Long-Islander, January 24, 1919
For reasons unclear (one suspects a Machiavellian plot), the friendly but unwieldy group soon morphed into a tightly-run smaller group, led by Dr. Elwood Curtis, a local political opponent of the Steinert family. Perhaps because it wanted to seem more authoritative, the small group chose to ally itself with a national organization, and henceforth called itself the Welcome Home Committee of the Patriotic Order, Sons of America.
POSA Membership Application, Wikipedia
Other than a referral by an existing member, the application does
not ask for much, but it does want to know where you were born-
not surprising, in light of POSA's concerns about immigration.
Many villagers were bitter about the change. The original committee had reported to the community, and no one else. It had done all the groundwork, and now it would not get credit for its efforts. The parents of the deceased soldiers were immigrants, and the POSA opposed immigration. Townsfolk were suspicious of Curtis, not a native son, who maintained close ties with the City and New Jersey.
Moreover, the revamped group disowned the existing Welcome Committee's agreement with Hicksville's highly-regarded Sutter Works, instead giving the job of making the memorial to a non-local firm. Joseph Steinert, Jr. had a letter which lamented this change published in the Long-Islander. Elwood Curtis promptly responded to that letter with one of his own, which blamed the change on demands reportedly made by Fred Sutter (son of the monument works' founder Daniel Sutter, who was one of the early German settlers). Sutter then had a letter published, refuting Curtis's allegations. Which truth should one believe?
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