The World War I Centennial

I happened to come across the book World War I Day by Day on my bookshelf recently, which I purchased in 2014, the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I.  It is filled with photographs of the war and quite fascinating.  At the time there was some interest in that long ago war, but interest faded until 2016, the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, where Britain suffered 57,000 casualties in one day, with 19,000 killed, the greatest loss of life in a single day in British history.  There were a number solemn ceremonies in the UK, and after that interest in the war, at least here in the US, once again seemed to die.  Just for fun, I decided to look for a World War I memorial here in Denver, and found one in of all places Globeville, a Denver neighborhood with a lot of industry near the Denver Coliseum.  It is a modest affair, and honors Globeville residents who gave their lives in both World War I and World War II.  The United States did not enter World War I until May of 1918, and the war was over by November of that year, which might explain the lack of memorials for that war here in the US.  I don't imagine there will be much fanfare commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of the war here, either.

However, that war had a tremendous impact on Europe.  It almost bankrupted Great Britain, and eliminated an entire generation of young men.  It left Britain a nation of widows and spinsters, and it took many years for the country to recover.  This is probably why my Aunt Elsie, her sister Margaret, and their mother left Blackpool in England and immigrated to Cleveland right after that war.  My Uncle Bill (my mother Mary's brother) got a job with an insurance company as an adjuster, and was soon transferred to Cleveland from Chicago, where he met and married Elsie, seen in the photograph on the right with her mother.  I was probably taken in the early 1940s during a visit to Chicago.  I never met her mother myself, but my sister remembers her fondly.  When my parents and she would go to Cleveland for a visit and she would get in a scrape with her cousin July, she would run to Mrs. Blackburn and cry :"Grandma Blackbird, Grandma Blackbird, Judy is being mean to me again."  But I digress.  There is a Colorado WWI Centennial Commission, and a website, but the only thing it seems to feature here in Colorado is a photograph of the above memorial in Argo Park, honoring those Globeville soldiers.  However, there do seem to be a lot of events mentioned nationally. Check it out at http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/colorado-in-wwi-places/849:wwi-memorial-argo-park.html.