Dedication of Miantonomi Memorial Tower

Congressman Clark Burdick (1868-1948), Republican, Rhode Island 1st Congressional District, and former Mayor of Newport (1917-1918), gave the address of the dedication on the Miantonomi Memorial Tower on September 5, 1929. This is what he had to say:

"Today, as we stand on this historic spot, view the wonderful prospect unfolded before our eyes and look up to this sacred tower we dedicate our minds go back to the dark days of the war and memories of the last 15 years fill our minds with sorrow and with joy.

I say memories of sorrow in the suffering and death of our boys. I say memories of joy in the thought of what American youth performed in the defense of civilization. Ten years ago I had the honor of appointing this World War Memorial commission and today I want to express my thanks and gratitude to the members of that commission for their untiring devotion in this work of love, and for this splendid success which had crowned their efforts.

Eleven and 12 years ago I bade farewell and Godspeed to our boys in your name, as mayor of this city. Many of those boys have their names inscribed for all times upon this memorial - this monument built of the very stones that in their youth knew their footfalls.

No more beautiful spot, no more appropriate place, no more stately memorial could possibly be erected to those of our boys who made the supreme sacrifice and now lie buried "in Flanders fields," and whose charge to us is:

"To you, from falling hands we throw, The torch - be yours to hold it high If you break faith with us who die. We shall not sleep, though poppies grow. In Flanders fields"

Their eyes may not behold, their ears may nor hear, nor can their minds conceive the scene, the prayers, the thoughts that today and all days through the coming years will hallow this sacred spot.

Now that it has been dedicated to the sacred memory of our dead, let no vandals hand mar its beauty nor profane its high ideal. It stands as an inspiration to the living, and unless we learn its lesson on patriotism, our labors have been in vain.

The comrades of these boys are still with us, many of them maimed and crippled in that awful strife and in need of a kindly word, a generous act, a helping hand. Who can deny them?

In closing, let me read from an inscription taken from a memorial in the state house grounds to the soldier dead of the Civil War, changed in a few respects to fit this occasion, and see if it does not express our thoughts for our own heroic dead:

"This monument perpetuates the memory of those who, true to the instincts of their birth, faithful to the teachings of their fathers, constant to their love for the state, died in the performance of their duty; who have glorified a worthy cause by the simple manhood of their lives, the patient endurance of suffering and the heroism of death, and who in the dark hours of imprisonment, in the hopelessness of the hospital in the short, sharp agony of the field, found support and consolation in the belief that, at home, they would not be forgotten."

Let the stranger who may in future times read this inscription recognize that these were men whom power could not corrupt, whom death could not terrify, whom temporary defeat could not dishonor and let their virtues plead for just judgment of the cause in which they perished.

Let the citizens of another generation remember that the state taught them how to live and how to die, and that she has preserved for her children the priceless treasure of their memories, teaching all who claim the same birthright that truth, courage and patriotism endure forever.

Those for whom they died inscribed on this marble the solemn record of their sacrifice, the perpetual gratitude of the state they served, the undying affection of those whose lives the separation of death has shadowed with an ever-lasting sorrow. Scattered over the battlefields of Europe, buried in remote and alien graves, dying un-soothed by the tough of familiar and household hands, their names are graves here to recall to their children and kinsmen how worthily they lived, how nobly they died and with what tender reverence their memory survives."

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