• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Flags stolen from war memorial

SHARON TOWNSHIP — Chet Borowski is upset that someone again has vandalized the memorial he maintains at his home at N1190 Peters Road and that the Walworth County Sheriff’s Office hasn’t done anything about it.

“I am bracing for a summer of late night harassment,” he said.

The Coalition Memorial is a series of panels with the names of soldiers from the United States and other countries who have died fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and other locations. The flags of the coalition forces fly alongside the memorial.

Sometime during the early-morning hours Sunday, someone stole the British and Polish flags and their flagpoles.

Borowski discovered the vandalism Sunday evening, when he went to raise and lower to half-staff the flag of the United Kingdom in honor of three British soldiers who were killed by suicide bombers in Afghanistan.

“It was very sad not to be able to perform a respectful ritual I have been performing for over five years in tribute to the fallen of Afghanistan and Iraq,” Borowski wrote Monday in an e-mail to the sheriff’s office.

Borowski called the sheriff’s office about 12:30 a.m. Sunday to report a noisy pickup truck that paused near the memorial before “gunning its engine” and racing away into the nearby Gallagher Woods. A similar incident happened Saturday about the same time.

The “harassment” is similar to incidents that have happened in previous years, he said.

Deputy Todd Neumann told Borowski later Sunday that Deputy Robert Wierenga made a traffic stop about a mile south of his home on Peters Road after Borowski reported the noisy pickup truck. Neumann told Borowski that two 17-year-olds and one 18-year-old were stopped.

The vehicle was searched and the flags weren’t found. The teens denied vandalizing the memorial. None of the teens was cited.

Borowski said the flags might have been stolen in retaliation for being stopped by the sheriff’s office.

Borowski said he has contacted the sheriff’s office a number of times since reporting the incident and hasn’t received a response. He said he wants the vandals punished to prevent “a renewed cycle of crime” against the memorial, which has been damaged almost a half-dozen times since he started it in May 2003.

Borowski said he learned to ignore the harassment over the years, but the incident Sunday was “egregious,” he said, and he couldn’t just let it go.

“My doing nothing just isn’t acceptable to me anymore,” he wrote in an e-mail to the sheriff’s office.

Borowski temporarily has taken down the memorial. All that remains at the foot of his driveway are the counting stone, which documents the number of soldiers killed to date, the American flag and a spotlight.

He said the memorial will be on full display on weekends and holidays, but he’ll take it down before midnight each day.

The sheriff’s office is investigating the incident.