Hempfield man on mission to document war memorials in Pennsylvania
Rob Domenick has become a magnet for war honor rolls.
He knows all the right places to look, scouring Pennsylvania communities for memorials small and large to help with a national American Legion project.
“You have to look for the right kind of community,” said Domenick of Hempfield. “Little places, real communities have put up things like this.”
Domenick has submitted documentation of more than 300 war memorials to the American Legion’s database of 2,855 as a public service. The project seeks to document memorials across the country with locations and photographs in a searchable format.
The database lists 480 memorials from Pennsylvania, the most documented in the country thanks in large part to Domenick’s efforts, said Julie Campbell, an American Legion spokeswoman.
His interest in honoring service members started with his own family. Domenick said he visited a Westmoreland County cemetery years ago with his mother and found that an uncle, who was a World War II veteran, didn’t have a grave marker.
He eventually secured that marker and joined the Jeannette American Legion Post 344, where he is historian and chaplain. It didn’t take him long to get started helping with the legion’s national database — he documented one on Millersdale Road in Hempfield.
A small memorial in Sewickley Township honoring those who served in both world wars and Korea was among the first Domenick located in 2017. The service members of Shaner and Guffey, coal patch villages in the eastern part of the county near the Youghiogheny River, are acknowledged on a wooded back road in a well-maintained strip of creekside land.
Domenick said neither community still exists as it did decades ago. Public spaces, community centers, old schools and other gathering places often are where he finds memorials, either on purpose or by chance.
“You kind of have to know where to look,” he said. “If you look and you keep yourself open to looking, you’ll find them.”
During his travels working as an attorney, Domenick has found himself in the far reaches of places such as Greene and Clearfield counties. That has helped him stumble upon plenty of memorials in addition to the more local ones, such as in Monessen, Donora and Allegheny Township. It’s a weekly adventure.
“It’s fun to do; you enjoy it,” he said. “Most are really well maintained. Somebody cares somewhere about these, and they do the maintenance.”
But there are plenty more out there that Domenick hasn’t found yet.
“There’s bound to be a back road somewhere … I haven’t driven yet,” he said.
If you know of a memorial that hasn’t been documented on the legion’s database, Domenick is taking tips at 724-523-9530.
Renatta Signorini is a TribLive reporter covering breaking news, crime, courts and Jeannette. She has been working at the Trib since 2005. She can be reached at rsignorini@triblive.com.
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