Cannon Memorial
Brookfield, Cook County, Illinois
Marker Inscription
In Memoriam Dedicated to the memory of all who served honorably in the Armed Forces of the United States Edward Feely Post No 190 American Legion Brookfield Ill Oct 13 1935
The Story
Dedicated on October 13, 1935, by Edward Feely Post No. 190 of the American Legion, this memorial honors all who served honorably in the armed forces of the United States. Erected between the world wars by veterans of the Chicago suburb of Brookfield, it reflects the American Legion's mission to keep the memory of service alive in the everyday life of the community. A cannon standing sentinel gave the memorial its enduring local name.
Why it matters
American Legion memorials from the interwar years show how returning veterans organized to ensure that communities honored military service as a permanent civic duty.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Brookfield is one of the railroad-and-streetcar suburbs that grew up west of Chicago in the early twentieth century, a place of tidy houses, churches, and civic clubs. By the mid-1930s it was a settled community with a strong sense of local identity — exactly the kind of town where veterans' organizations put down deep roots.
The memorial was dedicated in 1935, squarely in the years between the two world wars. The men who raised it had come home from the First World War to a country trying to make sense of that conflict's staggering cost, and they were determined that the service of soldiers not simply fade once the parades ended.
The Great Depression forms the backdrop, too. Even as money was tight across the country, communities like Brookfield found the will to honor service publicly — a sign of how much that shared commitment mattered to the civic life of the interwar Midwest.
People & events
The memorial was the work of Edward Feely Post No. 190 of the American Legion, the veterans' organization founded after World War I to serve former service members and keep the memory of service alive in everyday community life. Legion posts were customarily named for a local person who died in service, and this post carried the name of Edward Feely — a way of binding a national organization to one town's own loss.
Dedicated on October 13, 1935, the memorial was pointedly inclusive. Rather than honoring a single war or a single unit, it was dedicated to *all* who served honorably in the armed forces of the United States — a broad embrace that spoke to the Legion's mission of continuous, permanent remembrance.
A cannon standing guard gave the memorial its enduring local name. Placing a piece of ordnance as a monument was a common practice of the era, turning an instrument of war into a fixed, dignified emblem of service at the heart of a peacetime town.
Its place in the American story
The American Legion memorials of the 1920s and 1930s tell a distinctly American story: how returning veterans organized themselves to make sure their communities honored military service not as a one-time event but as a permanent civic duty. This Brookfield stone is one small piece of a nationwide movement.
By dedicating the memorial to *all* who served honorably, rather than to a single conflict, the Legion post created something that could speak for every generation of veterans who came before and after. That broad framing anticipated the way American communities would come to gather at such sites on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, year after year.
It is also a reminder that much of the country's commemorative landscape was built not by governments but by the veterans themselves — ordinary citizens who insisted, town by town, that service be remembered where people actually lived.
If you visit
Look first for the cannon that gives the memorial its name; it is the feature locals have long used to point the place out. Notice how a weapon has been transformed into something calm and ceremonial, planted in a quiet suburban setting.
Read the dedication and note its deliberate breadth — it honors everyone who served honorably, without naming a war. That plainness is worth sitting with, because it lets the memorial belong to every era at once.
This is an easy, rewarding stop if you are exploring Chicago's western suburbs. It pairs well with a stroll through Brookfield's older streets, where you can get a feel for the settled interwar community that raised this monument in the depths of the Depression.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Edward Feely
Themes & tags
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