Middletown Woman Surprised - And Happy - to See Uncle's Name On WWI Plaque

For Leah Simmons, it was quite the Veterans Day surprise.

She was reading the Asbury Park Press Wednesday morning, specifically an article about how the Belford doughboy is in disrepair, when one of the veterans’ names on the World War I plaque caught her eye: It was her great-uncle, John Riechman.

“I said, ‘Wow! My uncle is on this plaque!’ We had no idea,” said Simmons. “It was very, very surprising.”

Simmons, a New Monmouth resident, said she always knew about the Belford World War I monument and had driven past it for years. Yet all that time she never knew her great-uncle’s name was included in the memorial.

“I never took the time to look,” she said.

Riechman was born in Brooklyn, but became a lifelong Middletown resident. He served in the Navy in WWI and toured with the Navy all over the world, recounted Simmons. He returned home to Middletown after service, where he worked as an engineer on steam engines.

On this Veterans Day, Simmons and her husband, Bill, made a special pilgrimage to see the statue. Sure enough, there was her great-uncle’s name forever memorialized in bronze. The couple took pictures and posed in front of the doughboy.

“It’s very cool,” she said, standing in the small Belford park. “Right now I’m thinking not only about him, but my father, a Marine who served in the South Pacific in World War II, my dad’s brother, my mom’s father, my husband’s father and all the veterans who served. I’m just soaking it all in.”

Photo credit: Carly Baldwin/Patch