This one found a shady spot at Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Mill Brook Park. (WHAV News photograph.)
Haverhill’s veterans gained a new ally Tuesday—actually a few who aren’t all that picky when the dinner bell rings.
The latest volunteer contractors at the new Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Mill Brook Park are a trip of goats on loan from Georgetown-based Goats To Go. With a dedication ceremony planned in the fall, Memorial Commission Chairman Ralph T. Basiliere told WHAV, some extra help was needed.
“I called a local veteran named Alan Aulson from Georgetown who owns Goats To Go and I told him about my dilemma of my high meadow grasses. He came over and took a look and we found the goats would be a very efficient and whimsical and uplifting way to environmentally remove the grasses that we need before monuments are installed,” he said.
Aulson donated the goats’ services. They stayed overnight in their own tent and are expected to be on-site through today.
The memorial moved last year at the urging of former City Councilor Louis Fossarelli from near the Basiliere Bridge, downtown, to the new site near Plug Pond. Since that time, the park has been transformed by brick-paved walkways to two circular areas for monuments. A seven-ton obelisk, a new ‘13’ memorial and education stanchions made of granite will be erected—with granite coming from the same quarry that supplied the original memorial.
Basiliere previously explained the obelisk—also 13-feet tall in honor of the 13 lost veterans—salutes the service of all men and women who served in Vietnam. A new memorial, honoring those who gave their lives during the war, will be erected. The existing memorial, cut from Barre, Vt. granite, will be retired because of damage and buried under the walkway with dignity and honor normally reserved for retiring a flag. A new flagpole and benches will also be placed.