About the Narberth Roll of Honor

Between 1944 and 1946, 469 men and 11 women (or their family members) documented their World War Ⅱ service at Narberth's American Legion Harold D. Speakman Post No. 356. This was a local project carried out by World War Ⅰ veterans who were the Post's founding members.

To search by address, activate the Roll of Honor markers on the Narberth History Map.

Show photo key

One roll, 480 forms

After we published the Roll in February 2017, we asked our readers to help transcribe two basic entries on each form: when was the form submitted?, and where did the service member live? Here are the results, percentages rounded to the nearest whole number.

80% (380) of the forms have a borough address, either the service member's or the family's. These are marked on the Narberth History Map so you can browse by location. On the map, larger stars indicate more than one person at an address.

94% (449) of the forms are dated. 98% of these were submitted over 28 months between May 15, 1944 and September 18, 1946, so we consider this the core span of the Post's project. Four forms were dated earlier, the first in September 1942, and six later, including one each in 1987 and 1991.

Almost three-quarters of all the dated forms were submitted during three periods of increased activity:

• June 16 – August 16, 1944 (61 days, 156/35% of dated forms)
• February 24 – March 7, 1945 (11 days, 84/19%)
• December 31, 1945 – February 12, 1946 (43 days, 87/19%)

A dramatic surge

Nothing quite matched the four days from Saturday, February 24 through Tuesday, February 27, 1945. It began with 18 registrations, by far the busiest single day, followed by the next three highest daily counts. In four days, 52 registrations came in, more than one in nine submitted throughout the project. In just 11 days, almost one in five of the total was received. What might have inspired this flurry?

The third peak occurred after the war had concluded and troops were returning home. In December 1945 alone, one million men were discharged from the U.S. military.

Letters and Photos from the War

The icons indicate a name on the Roll with letters and/or photos in the Russell Byerley Memorial World War II Collection. Byerley, a shop teacher and coach at Lower Merion High School, received over 2,000 letters and photos from his former students who were serving in the war. The collection is not online but can be consulted by visiting the Lower Merion Historical Society.

Thank you

With the Legion's permission, we have digitized these forms and present them all here. Each form has a link to a higher resolution PDF version which can be downloaded for printing or closer inspection.

The Friends of Narberth History is grateful to the American Legion for sharing these documents, and to Nancy Grundahl, who scanned every page in every binder and meticulously named each file to make it possible to automate documenting every veteran's name. Thank you to the anonymous community members who went online and transcribed addresses and dates from the forms.

…and most of all, to the honorary post members listed below. Not every one of them filled out a form, but on the forms of those who did, a gold star follows their name to acknowledge their sacrifice.

Introduction to the Roll of Honor

Transcribed verbatim; a few name spellings have been edited to match what's on the form and links have been added. The links lead to the roll of honor form, or if they don't have one, to their personal profile.