By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer
World War II veterans are honored at a ceremony at the high school.

LEWISTON – Theresa Garant was 8 years old the last time she saw her brother, 22-year-old Fernand Duchesneau. A soldier in the Army, he was shot and killed during World War II.

For 62 years, Garant and a few close family members quietly remembered the Lewiston High School graduate as a good man lost before his time.

On Thursday, nearly 100 others joined her in her grief.

In a short ceremony held in its memorial garden, Lewiston High School remembered Duchesneau and the 51 other graduates who died during World War II, relocating and rededicating a plaque in their honor. Dozens of veterans, school officials, students and family members attended the memorial.

Memories live on

Garant, now 70, sat with her husband and daughter. She carried her brother’s medals on a small cloth banner adorned with the year he was born and the year he died.

“This way I can keep him with me throughout the ceremony,” she said with tears in her eyes.

The large bronze memorial plaque was created in the 1940s and hung for decades in the old Lewiston high school on Central Avenue. A new high school was built on East Avenue in the 1970s, and that Central Avenue building was turned into Lewiston Middle School.

Because it was hung above eye level, few people ever realized the plaque was even there. Jody Dube noticed it several years ago when he was a substitute teacher.

The name of his uncle, Lawrence Dube, was inscribed on it.

“I’d heard about him all my life. I would have loved to have known him,” said Dube, now an art teacher at Lewiston High School. “What strikes me when I look at all the names are all the holes in the families around here.”

When Lewiston High School started its memorial garden a few years ago, Dube asked about moving the plaque. It took two years for school employees to get permission to move the plaque, to refurbish it and to track down the families of the men who were named.

Plaque

On Thursday, the plaque was unveiled to an audience of nearly 100, including Junior ROTC members, VFW members and relatives of the men.

Dube and Patrick Blais, a Lewiston High School history teacher and the great-nephew of a soldier on the plaque, slowly read the names of the 52 men listed. Some people bowed their heads or read along in their programs.

The plaque was, audience members said, a necessary memorial.

“So people know we appreciate everything, you know?” said 17-year-old Katie Wing, a senior at the high school.

After the ceremony, several people gently touched the plaque hanging on a school wall in the courtyard. Others reminisced about the lost soldiers they knew as boys.

With her husband beside her, Garant cried a little.

During the ceremony, school leaders invited relatives to return to the garden from now on when they wanted to remember their loved ones. Garant vowed to do just that.

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