To honor a soldier, fountain will flow anew

Restored Walpole landmark to serve as memorial to fallen son

Kyle Martin (left), Mark Voner, and Jack Lorusso of the Veterans Development Corporation will donate time and materials to the project. (Globe Staff Photo / Mark Wilson )

It's been 10 months since Andy Bacevich was killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq, yet the love and support his family still sees make it clear to them how much his life - and death - mattered.

Handwritten cards of consolation have come from local schoolchildren in Walpole. Expressions of sympathy are frequent.

And, perhaps most lasting of all, work will begin next month to restore Walpole's historic Bird Fountain as a memorial to the young Army first lieutenant.

"This is a patriotic town," said Nancy Bacevich, who lost her only son on Mother's Day. "They think a lot about the soldiers. And we find some consolation in that."

Bacevich's death was the town's first casualty of the war in Iraq.

Andy Bacevich had been eager to serve. While he was a student at Boston University, majoring in communications, he joined the Army's Reserve Officers Training Corps, but had to leave the program because of his asthma.

After his graduation, he worked as an aide on Beacon Hill, but enlisted in the Army after he discovered that asthmatics would be allowed. His father, Andrew, a BU professor and retired Army colonel, supported him, even as he remained an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq.

Andy Bacevich died May 13 as he tried to protect one of his gunners from the attack in the Sunni triangle, north of Baghdad. His parents reeled at the news that their only son was dead.

It was by a coincidence of sorts that the fountain in the Town Common emerged as a memorial to the 27-year-old Army officer.

In November, his family donated $5,000 to the last phase of the Town Common beautification project, restoring the old stone fountain. It had fallen into disrepair and had long been dry.

Not long afterward, Norwell-based contractor Mark Voner decided that he'd like to contribute the materials, time, and labor to complete the $50,000 job in Andy Bacevich's honor. The town agreed.

Voner, a service-disabled veteran injured in Lebanon in the 1980s, is president of Veterans Development Corporation. The organization has contributed to a variety of veteran-related government construction jobs, he said, including some at the Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital in Washington.

Voner said he was moved by the Bacevich family's loss and wanted to find some way to help.

"This is what veterans do," he said. "They are the backbone of this country. And they always have been.

"Here," he said, noting the fountain project, "the stars just all lined up. And when I asked the team to step up, they said they will do whatever we need to."

Bird Fountain, donated by one of the town's founding families, cannot be renamed, but a plaque commemorating Bacevich's life can be placed near it, Voner said. The job should begin in the middle of next month and be done by mid-summer, he said: "I'm putting my top supervisor on this. He knows how important it is to me."

The restoration will include painting the overhead trellis, masonry and plumbing, a walkway from Main Street, and granite benches.

"Let's face it," Town Administrator Michael Boynton said, "generosity is pretty synonymous with Walpole. People here come forward.

"We'll be bringing it back to life and honoring a person who gave his life for his country. We are very happy about it."

So are Bacevich's parents.

The idea that the historic fountain at the town's center would be dedicated to her son is "flabbergasting," Nancy Bacevich said.

In a phone interview, she softly recalled the high-energy marathon runner whose keen humor routinely cracked up his three sisters and his father.

Then, she quietly added: "We miss him a lot."

Michele Morgan Bolton can be reached at mmbolton1@verizon.net.