28th Division Shrine
Harris Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Dedicated to heroic dead of Pennsylvania's famed 28th in two world wars. The Division was created Sept., 1917. The Shrine was founded by Col. Theodore Boal and made a State memorial in 1932.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Pennsylvania's 28th Infantry Division traces its lineage to 1917, and it went on to earn a fierce reputation in the trenches of the First World War and again in the hedgerows and forests of the Second. Colonel Theodore Boal founded this hillside shrine to honor the division's fallen, and Pennsylvania made it an official state memorial in 1932. The site gathers the memory of two generations of Keystone State soldiers into one place of reflection.
Why it matters
The 28th Division embodies how state National Guard units carried ordinary American communities into the century's largest wars, and this shrine is among the earliest public efforts to give that shared sacrifice a permanent home.
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Related people
- ¡ Theodore Boal
Themes & tags
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