Veterans Blog Introduction

The start of World War II is now more than eight decades in the rear view mirror.  So why a blog about the Town of Wilton, NY’s response to hostilities that started and concluded long before many of us were born?  

Well, because many of us are the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of those whose lives were upended by the events of the war.  And because the effects of the war were nearly universal across our nation’s thousands of towns. 

Wilton’s 2020 population was more than 17,000 but the 1940 census shows fewer than half that many people.  Wilton was heavily agricultural in the 1940’s, but has taken on a distinctly suburban tone, particularly in its southern reaches near the City of Saratoga Springs.  

And of course, the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of 1940’s Wilton residents have migrated all over the United States and the world in the intervening years.  Which makes a blog the ideal way to seek out additional ideas about how to frame this important era in our recent history.  And not just from the descendants of Wilton’s veterans.

My father received a draft notice from the Otsego County (NY) Selective Service Board in late 1940 and presented himself for induction into the US Army in January 1941, many months prior to Japan’s December attack on Pearl Harbor.   He would be released from the Army in October that year, and called back to duty shortly after the attack, serving continuously thereafter until September 1945.  I was part of the post-war baby boom, arriving at the end of 1947….

My colleague, Harriett Finch, has undertaken this project in tribute to the many World War II veterans in Wilton and other, similar places.  Harriett (Hady) Finch, is also a baby boomer, retired educator and tireless student of history.  She has turned her focus on Wilton because, like me, she served on the Board of Trustees of The Friends of US Grant Cottage for a number of years.  The Cottage, while actually in the Town of Moreau, can be approached by highway only through Wilton and has enjoyed support of that town and its Historical Association for many years.  And its history is inextricably linked with Wilton, the community at the base of Mount McGregor on which The Cottage has been perched for the past 140 plus years. 

Eric Porteus, Glens Falls, Summer 2022.