Mount Vernon ceremony honors World War I hero Joseph Berg, installs replacement plaque

Members of the Anne Washington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and local volunteers gathered in Mount Vernon City to mark the centennial of a 1925 monument honoring Joseph Berg and to place a replacement plaque after a missing tablet was noted during cleaning in 2014.

The ceremony included a posting of colors by BSA Troop 4001, the Pledge of Allegiance led by Eagle Scout Bradley Tormey, an invocation by Roxanne Baxter and a benediction by Trish Vaughn. Roxanne Baxter, identified in the program as U.S. Navy (ret.) and a past Anne Washington chapter chaplain, said in her invocation: "May we never forget their sacrifices." Vaughn closed the program with a prayer that thanked God "for the courage and sacrifice of not only Joseph Berg, but of all of our veterans."

Organizers recounted Berg’s life and military service. According to speakers, Berg was born in Belgium in 1897, immigrated with his family to the United States in 1908, and later worked in Mount Vernon at the train depot and as a telegraph operator for the Great Northern Railroad. The program said he enlisted in the Army in May 1916 and was naturalized soon after; he later served in France with Company G, 160th Infantry. The host read from Berg’s Distinguished Service Cross citation, saying Berg exposed himself to heavy machine-gun and artillery fire and disabled three enemy machine-gun nests, actions for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross on March 23, 1919.

Speakers also described Berg’s later service in the Navy and his death. The account said Berg enlisted in the Navy in August 1922 and died on June 12, 1924, in a gunnery explosion aboard USS Mississippi that the program described as, at the time, the deadliest peacetime disaster in Navy history. A Navy letter to Berg’s mother and a chapter scrapbook noting her thanks were cited by the organizers.

The monument originally stood on the Roosevelt School grounds at 4th and Fulton and was dedicated on Veterans Day, 1925, the host said. The monument was moved to its current location in 2005 with help from local partners including Hawthorne Funeral Home and Memorial Park and community members; longtime caretaker Rich Sundance was recognized for maintenance of this and other Skagit Valley monuments. During a 2014 cleaning, the Anne Washington Chapter discovered one plaque was missing; organizers said they had archival records of the plaque’s exact wording and placed a duplicate of that wording on the new plaque at this ceremony.

The program listed numerous donors and volunteers who supported cleaning, research and the plaque replacement and named the Joseph Berg Committee members. After the formal remarks and benediction, the program closed with taps and attendees were invited to a reception at Hawthorne Funeral Home and Memorial Park, where historical photos and a memorial book were available for viewing.

The event was presented as a local commemoration of a World War I-era veteran and a community effort to preserve his monument and memory. No formal government action or vote was recorded during the program.