Union County World War II Honor Roll binder finds new home in Mifflinburg

A binder listing 2,260 Union County World War II names has found a new home in Mifflinburg, giving families and researchers a more accessible way to verify who from the county served in the war and how many never came home.

Doug Walter of the Union County Veterans Foundation donated the binder, which contains the same names recorded on the Union County World War II Honor Roll monument in Mifflinburg Community Park. Walter said the project reflects how broad the county’s wartime reach was: "There's people all the way from New Columbia, White Deer, Allenwood, all the way up to the West End." He added that compiling the roster was "quite a process" because there were 19 different sources used to assemble the names.

The honor roll itself was dedicated on Nov. 8, 2003, and it remains a significant county memorial. It honors 2,260 Union County residents who served in World War II, including 59 who died in service. One of those honored was a posthumous Medal of Honor recipient. The monument was the vision of Drew Machamer and Albert Hess, who reportedly put their homes up as collateral to help make it happen.

The binder’s new home comes after another round of preservation work at the site. In 2023, Walter said the monument needed about $14,000 in bronze restoration. By May 2024, community donations had topped $19,000, enough to cover the bronze repairs and additional concrete work in front of the monument. Walter said, "the community once again rallied around us."

The memorial has become a fixed point for remembrance in Union County. Annual Veterans Day observances are held there on the Saturday before Veterans Day, and the ceremony also serves as a benefit for the VA nursing home in Hollidaysburg. That continuity is part of what makes the binder matter now: it keeps the names in circulation, tied to a site where the county can still gather, read them aloud and verify the record.

The honor roll’s path also traces Union County’s changing memory of the war. The original wooden honor roll once stood outside the federal building in Lewisburg, but it fell into disrepair and was torn down. The current memorial in Mifflinburg, built at a cost of about $200,000, replaced it as a more permanent home for the county’s World War II record. With the binder now placed alongside that monument, the names are less likely to fade from view.