Gold Star Families Memorial Marker dedication Saturday

Bullhook Blossoms Garden Club and the Havre Lions Club are inviting people to a special dedication ceremony Saturday for a memorial for those who lost their lives serving the country.

The Gold Star Families Memorial Marker at Havre's Town Square will be dedicated Saturday at 11 a.m.

The tradition began in World War I, a release from Montana Blue and Gold Star Families Memorial Chair Kathy Austin said. The custom during the war became families of service members hanging a banner, called a service flag, in their window. Living service members were represented on the flag by a blue star and people who had died in service were represented by a gold star.

American Legion's website says the official Blue Star Service Banner was designed and patented in 1917 by Capt. Robert L. Queisser, a veteran of the 5th Ohio Infantry. Queisser's two sons served on the front line during World War I. His banner quickly became the unofficial symbol for parents with a child in active military service.

Sept. 24, 1917, an Ohio congressman read the following into the Congressional Record: "The mayor of Cleveland, the Chamber of Commerce and the governor of Ohio have adopted this service flag. The world should know of those who give so much for liberty. The dearest thing in all the world to a father and mother: their children."

The U.S. Department of Defense has authorized the banner for families who have members serving in the United States Armed Forces, the National World War I Museum and Memorial website says.

Blue Star Mothers and Gold Star Mothers organizations were established during World War I and remain active today, the National Garden Club website says.

A release from Bullhook Blossoms Garden Club said American Gold Star Mothers was incorporated in 1929, starting with the work during World War I of Grace Darling Siebold, whose son, 1st Lt. George Vaughn Seibold, was serving as a pilot attached to the British Royal Flying Corps and deployed in France. She began visiting returning servicemen in the hospitals while he served, the American God Star Mothers website says.

She continued to visit returning servicemen in hospitals after the family stopped receiving mail from her son. In 1918, they received confirmation that he was killed in action.

Grace Siebold continued to work in hospitals and "extended the hand of friendship to other mothers whose sons had lost their lives in military service," the site says.

She organized a group consisting of mothers who had lost sons in combat, and it was named after the gold star that families hung in their windows in honor of their deceased family members.

The site says that June 4, 1928, 25 mothers met in Washington to establish American Gold Star Mothers Inc. It was incorporated Jan. 5, 1929.

June 12, 1984, Congress again granted American Gold Star Mothers Inc. a charter, the website says.

The charter lists the objects and purposes for which the corporation was organized, the site says:

• Keep alive and develop the spirit that promoted world services.

• Maintain the ties of fellowship born of that service, and to assist and further all patriotic work.

• Inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the community, State, and Nation.

• Assist veterans of World War I, World War II, the Korean Conflict, Vietnam, and other strategic areas and their dependents in the presentation of claims to the Veterans' Administration, and to aid in any way in their power the men and women who served and died or were wounded or incapacitated during hostilities.

• Perpetuate the memory of those whose lives were sacrificed in our wars.

• Maintain true allegiance to the United States of America.

• Inculcate lessons of patriotism and love of country in the communities in which we live.

• Inspire respect for the Stars and Stripes in the youth of America.

• Extend needful assistance to all Gold Star Mothers and, when possible, to their descendants.

• To promote peace and good will for the United States and all other Nations.

The Blue Star Marker program, which is for all men and women who serve in the U.S. Armed Services, began in 1944 with the planting of 8,000 dogwood trees by the New Jersey Council of Garden Clubs as a living memorial to veterans of World War II, the National Garden Club official website says.

The National Council of State Garden Clubs, now National Garden Club, adopted the program in 1945.

The Bullhook Blossoms release said National Garden Clubs adopted the Gold Star Marker program in 2015 as an adjunct program with the Blue Star Markers, in tribute to the Gold Star Families.

"(The Gold Star Families organization's) mission is to offer honor, hope and healing through remembering fallen heroes by coming together," the National Garden Club website says.

Gold Star Families provides support to those who have lost a loved one in service to the United States in the armed forces, to all family members representing all all conflicts, all branches of service and all circumstances of death.

Bullhook Blossoms Garden Club dedicated two Blue Star Marker memorials in Havre in 2017, and the ceremony Saturday is to dedicate the Gold Star Memorial erected last year by the club, in cooperation with the Havre Lions Club, at Town Square.

"Please join is at Town Square to honor the Gold Star families," the Bullhook Blossoms release said.