My next goal was to knock out all of the sites around the Cincinnati area. Much of this would mean riding in urban and suburban areas, so picking the right days and times would be critical if I was to avoid traffic. Luckily many of the sites in the area are accessible via back roads if one knows the area. I have lived here most of my life, and spent two summers during college working on local moving and delivery trucks, so I have a decent knowledge of the back roads of most of the Greater Cincinnati area. Google maps and basecamp would help me overcome the gaps. I’d start off by taking an afternoon and doing the east side of the metro area, beginning with a little town on the Ohio River, New Richmond.
A 9/11 site:
That would be followed by a site in Batavia, dedicated to K-9 Police dogs:
That particular site also had a really cool Veterans Memorial, that while not on the list was worth a picture:
Right down the road from there was a multiple site stop outside of Anderson:
Gold Star Mothers:
Vietnam Dogs of War:
A Huey:
Women that served in Vietnam:
POW-MIA
Purple Heart
The last one that day was in Loveland. Another 9/11 site:
The following Saturday…..
The southwest Ohio MSTA group meets every 3rd Saturday of the month for breakfast in Waynesville, Ohio. This would prove to be an excellent starting point for gathering sites north of the Greater Cincinnati area, along with one site in the western suburbs.
The 1st stop after breakfast was Lebanon, Ohio for a 9/11 site:
Then west from there over to Darrtown, Ohio and a pretty cool little veteran’s park. Yes, that is a Sherman tank in the picture:
I headed to Fairfield from there for another little veteran’s park that included a Gold Star Family memorial.
While there I ran across this old fellow sitting on a park bench. He was pretty quiet but had a lot to say.
Taking lots of back roads around the western suburbs I came to a park in Dent, Ohio that had some really cool stuff. Another Sherman tank on display is the 1st hint that there might be more here than you can see from the street.
A Gold Star Family memorial:
A 9/11 Memorial:
What is amazing to me is that we pass places like this almost every day of our lives and yet we almost never take the time to really stop and see them. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, but I hope to do better in the future.
The next morning, I got up early and headed out to find some sites that would take me through the heart of Cincinnati. Right up the central spine of the city and into some of the near north communities. I was hoping that it being a Sunday there would be no traffic or other problems I might have to encounter. It would also be my first gathering of any Doughboy sites. These are sites that were dedicated to our WWI veterans. As you might expect, there aren’t a lot of these around the country and the ones that do exist are usually in our older neighborhoods. It turns out that there are 5 of them in the city and I was going after all of them that day.
First stop was right in the heart of the I-75 industrial center of Cincinnati, not far from downtown.
From there I went straight up Vine Street to St. Bernard and got another doughboy:
Still further up Vine Street to the village of Wyoming:
Just a little further up the road in Reading:
Finally in Sharonville, within a large cemetery near the back:
An interesting story about the Doughboys is that many of them are identical. This is because the cost of having an individual one-off statue made for the memorials was beyond the funds available for most communities, especially during the Great Depression. The maker of these identical statues recognized this and instead of making unique ones for every community just copied the original one he had made. he thus was able to save the communities money and made a fortune for himself. There are 135 of them known to exist still today somewhere scattered across the US. There is a whole group of folks dedicated to finding them all and making sure that they are preserved for history.
That wraps up all of the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky sites. I’ll now begin perusing sites around, and between, Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky. This may take me alittle while to get back to as I’ve got an MSTA rally to attend, but I hope to get some sites along the way when I travel to and from that rally. I’ll update this as soon as I can. To be continued…..