The Colonel
As the years passed, people started to think of Henry as the village's Grand Old Man. With amicable respect, the newspapers started to refer to him as Col. Menge.
He still was frequently chosen to be Grand Marshal for one of the principal parades (i.e., for Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day), for which he would proudly don his old uniform. 1910's Independence Day parade was special, for on that day the extension to the school on Nicholai Street was formally dedicated, and thanks to "the Colonel," Civil War veteran groups came from Brooklyn, marched in the parade, and presented two American flags to the school.
When people saw Henry Menge at a public event, they might not even bother to wonder which group he was representing - it might be the Royal Arcanum, the G.A.R., the Republican Party, the Fire Department, the Village Improvement Association, or all of them at once.
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Hicksville did not learn of its three World War I soldiers' deaths until very late in 1918. On the next spring's Memorial Day, the village's parade led to the Triangle, where three oak trees, one for each man lost, were planted. Henry Menge personally planted one of them. Five weeks later, on Independence Day, the village had a large celebration for its returned veterans, and it then dedicated the commemorative boulder which bears the names of those who served in that war. Henry Menge and Louis Meyer, Hicksville's last surviving Civil War veterans, shared a place of honor in the parade that day, riding in an automobile, together holding up an American flag.
By 1924, even the official program for Hicksville's Memorial Day observation listed Col. Henry Menge as the ceremony's final speaker.
Huntington Long-Islander, May 23, 1924
Menge was a widower now, and at 76, he had slowed down. A whimsical but poignant newspaper report described his life in retirement as encompassing a flower garden, a goldfish, and a radio that refused to work.
He passed away about a year later. He was buried next to Johanna - not in his adopted Hicksville, for which he had done so much, but in Brooklyn's Cypress Hills National Cemetery, where he was surrounded by the ranks of graves of countless fellow veterans of the Civil War.
Cypress Hills National Cemetery
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