Ceremony will honor four Cornwall recipients
There are no holiday sales on March 25 and kids won’t get a day off from school. But it’s still a memorable occasion. It’s National Medal of Honor Day.
Congress chose the date because it’s the anniversary of the presentation of the first Medals of Honor. They went to members of Andrews’ Raiders, who stole a confederate train during the Civil War.
Cornwall has had four Medal of Honor recipients.
William J. Brewer, Abram P. Haring and Owen McGough received the military’s highest honor during the Civil War. Eight decades later 1 Lt. George W.G. Boyce was recognized posthumously for his bravery during World War II.
Mr. Boyce was born in 1916. He attended school on Willow Avenue when the building had students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. A schoolmate recalled that George could sit on a chair, place a hat on his foot, and swing his leg so the hat would fly into the air and land on his head.
Mr. Boyce worked in the insurance industry before enlisting in the Army. In 1944, he was leading a platoon in the jungles of New Guinea when the unit’s progress was halted by intense enemy fire. As the men tried a different route, a hand grenade landed between the lieutenant and his soldiers. The loss of life might have been substantial. But Lt. Boyce leaped on the grenade and smothered it with his body.
A year after his death, the lieutenant was selected to receive the Medal of Honor and a Navy ship was named after him. He is buried in Manila in the Philippines. Lt. Boyce was predeceased by his father (1889-1943) and his sister Adele (1913-39), who are both interred in Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Mountainville.
The lieutenant’s mother was living in New York City at the time of his death. He also had an older sister, Dorothy, who was born in either 1910 or 1911. We don’t know if she had any children – or if Lt. Boyce has any living relatives.
In 2014, Cornwall erected a monument near Town Hall to acknowledge its four Medal of Honor winners. A few years later, the Cornwall Board of Education dedicated a plaque to Lt. Boyce, which is now mounted on the wall near the principal’s office at Willow Avenue School.
American Legion Post 353 will observe Medal of Honor Day with a brief ceremony at 10 a.m. at the monument.
