The Few Remaining
World War II Memorial Plaques by Stella Kapetan
When a service member from Chicago was killed during World War II, the city held a ceremony where a plaque inscribed with their name and a gold star placed on top of a pole or attached to a lamp post was dedicated at the corner of the street where he or she lived. While there were thousands of these plaques across the city at the end of the war in August 1945, almost all are gone today. They were removed over the years for street repairs and other public works projects; out-of-control drivers hit and struck down others. Families moved away and were unaware that the plaque was gone. We look at two plaques that have survived, the men they honor and the families they left behind. David Vernon Jacobson, known as Vernon, grew up the middle child with his brothers James Kenneth and Frank Jerome, who also went by their middle names, and their parents Marie and Frank in the two-flat they owned at 3853 W. Addison Ave. on the northwest side. Vernon was an avid photographer, and his interest in aviation and engineering made the Army Air Force a natural fit, his niece Maria Jacobson recently said. Vernon was killed at age 23 on Oct. 13, 1944 when the P-39 Airacobra airplane he was piloting during training at Naples Army Airfield in Florida crashed on approach to the runway. Maria is Kenneth’s daughter and said he and Vernon were close. “Vernon got my dad hooked on building model airplanes,” she said. “Dad looked up to him because he was in the Air Force. Dad joined the Army Air Force, too.” Although Maria was born 12 years after Vernon died, she has always felt his death’s impact on her family, especially on her grandmother, whom she calls “Nana.” Maria recalled at around age 6 attending services with her at St. Viator Catholic Church on Addison Avenue near the family home. “We would pick up my Nana to go to church,” she said. “I remember sitting in the pew with my Nana, and she would be crying, mainly when there was a hymn. I said ‘nana, don’t cry.’ I asked my father, ‘why is Nana crying?’ My dad whispered to me ‘Because of Uncle Vernon.’” Maria also watched as her grandmother would cry and slowly walk over to the plaque honoring the parishioners in the service and put her hand over Vernon’s name. Maria said that had Vernon lived, he probably would have had a career with the airlines and moved to Florida, where he had enjoyed family vacations. She said it is ironic that it is where he died. The city dedicated Vernon’s plaque on the corner of Springfield and Eddy on Oct. 14, 1945, one year and a day after he died. It is unknown why it is not on Addison Avenue, but one block south. Vernon’s brothers, who have passed away, regularly tended to it.
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