GREENFIELD — The two errors on the monument that was installed at Veterans Mall in November have been fixed for a price of $5,250.
A memorial honoring those who have served in conflicts after the Vietnam War was unveiled as part of last year’s Veterans Day ceremony, but the island nation of Grenada was incorrectly spelled as Granada and the landlocked Southeast European country of Kosovo was spelled as Kosova.
“I love it. It looked good the first time, just those stupid mistakes,” said Chris Demars, director of the Upper Pioneer Valley Veterans’ Service District. “Five [sets of] eyes and everybody missed it.”
Bill Phelps, who chairs the Trustees of the Soldiers Memorial, previously explained the innocent mistakes were made by the trustees and not Negus & Taylor Monuments, the Greenfield company that crafted the piece. The monument was recently transported back to Negus & Taylor for the repairs and then returned to Veterans Mall on June 12.
Granada is a city in southern Spain, and the Republic of Kosova was a self-declared proto-state established as a shadow government in 1991 to exist in opposition to the Serbian-controlled government of the time, which is possibly why no spell-checking software caught the errors.
Demars previously said the monument itself cost slightly less than $14,000. Jonathon Weber, communications director for the Mayor’s Office, said the $5,250 bill to fix the misspellings will be covered by city funding originally budgeted for Chapter 115 payouts to low-income veterans and their dependents. He explained that more veterans than anticipated left that program during the fiscal year, freeing up some money.
The monument also honors those who served in conflicts in Lebanon, Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan and the war on terrorism.
