West side War Memorial

I grew up in the era when November 11 was still called Armistice Day and people wore a red paper poppy in remembrance of the end of World War I at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. Most memorials to the men and women who died in that war — and in all the various conflicts that followed it — are substantial structures. Whether they're figurative sculptures or abstract monuments we always recognize them and understand the references.

That's not the case with the relatively unknown war memorial that hundreds of people drive by each day on Madison's west side. That includes me; I passed right by it for the first ten years I lived on this side of Madison without a clue to its history.

Driving west on Tokay  Blvd. the very first side street after you cross Midvale is Togstad Glenn. The street is named after Morris Togstad and Victor S. Glenn. Togstad was Madison's last casualty of WWI and Glenn was its first casualty of World War II, according to the history of the Midvale Heights Neighborhood published in 2004.

In his book on Madison history, Stuart Levitan notes that Morris Togstad won the Croix de Guerre and died fighting in France on the day before the armistice was signed. When Togstad's body was returned to Madison for burial in Forest Hill Cemetary, 3,000 people turned out for the ceremony.

Victor Glenn died on December 18, 1942 in Papua, New Guinea. He is buried in Roselawn Memorial Park in Monona, according to the "Find a Grave" website. 

 

Comments

[Les]

My neighborhood is only a few years older than WWI, and at the end of my street overlooking the river is a memorial to the Great War. At some point someone(s) pushed one of accompanying benches into the water where it sat for years. The Norfolk dive police finally got it out, the barnacles were scraped from it, and young couples can now sit on it and kiss.