Southern Indiana war memorial assessed for restoration

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - A southern Indiana memorial that honors local war veterans is being readied for a planned restoration nine decades after it was erected.

Crews removed a limestone panel last week from the Alexander Memorial outside the Monroe County Courthouse in Bloomington to allow masons and engineers to study its condition.

Those assessments will help determine restoration cost estimates for a planned fundraising effort for the project.

The 35-foot-tall memorial that's topped by a rifle-bearing Civil War soldier was built in 1928 to honor Monroe County's veterans of all wars. But its four panels commemorate veterans of the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World War I.

County veterans service officer Mary Elftman tells The Herald-Times that those badly-worn panels will be re-carved using old photographs as a guide.

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Information from: The Herald Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com