How I Find Memorials for the Honor Roll Project

My husband and I enjoy car trips. In fact, when he retires, we are driving the loop across the contiguous 48 states, stopping at places we have not yet visited. It's not that we are afraid to fly. Pete has been flying to commute to work every week since 2013 and I just hate being treated like cattle or held captive in a hot plane. So whenever possible we drive. Since we began participating in Heather Rojo's Honor Roll Project, we've taken the road less traveled and discovered some truly quaint small towns, wonderful eateries, and talked to many interesting strangers. So how do I find all the honor roll memorials we photograph and transcribe?

World War II Honor Roll, Frederick, Maryland, personal collection
(I still transcribing this one; there are names on the back, too!)

Once we've determine the basic route of our trip, I look for honor roll memorials along the way. I use two main resources:

1. Memorial Day Foundation -- The War Memorial Registry is a crowdsourced database of veteran and war related monuments and memorials across the country. Just don't try to enter a Confederate memorial; they will delete it. To find honor rolls, I navigate in the following manner: Memorials >> War Memorial Registry >> Search Registry. Then I select the state for which I am interested and scroll down to the Type of Memorial Search dropdown and select War Memorial Honor Roll Plaques and Panels and Stones. 
2. Waymarking.com -- This is another crowdsourced website. Unfortunately, it does not have a category for honor rolls, but I've found entering "Honor Roll" in the Find Waymark search box works most of the time. Unfortunately, I have not yet figured out how to search by state or county as the Near Location search requires an address or postal code. So you will have many, many search results to wade through.
3. American Memorials Directory -- (Thank you Rob Gumlaw!) This is a database of all types of memorials in the U.S. I select a state and scroll through the listing to determine if there are any honor rolls in the state through which we plan to travel.

Before I finish searching, I'll Google Search the names of the towns along our route along with the keywords "Honor Roll." I'm always surprised at what I learn. Next, I check the list of honor roll memorials I've compiled against Heather Wilkinson Rojo's Honor Roll Project website. If someone else has already photographed and transcribed the memorials, I cross that possibility off my list.

Then, I use Google maps to locate the city or town in which the memorials I found on my two main sources are located to determine how close they are to our route of travel and select likely candidates to photograph and transcribe. If we stop to photograph a memorial when we are hungry, I use TripAdvisor to find a highly rated place to eat.

Heather's Honor Roll Project has enriched our travel experiences and enabled us to honor our veterans in some small way. I hope you will consider contributing, too.

Honor Roll: Scott County, Virginia, Gate City High School

Scott County, Virginia, formed in 1814 from parts of surrounding counties, is just north Kingsport, Tennessee, and south of West Virginia. It's about as far away from where I live and still be in the same state. Gate City is the county seat and the Gate City High School, a public school, was built in 1956. On an exterior wall of the school is a plaque commemorating the service of the county men and women who served in World War I and World War II.

Scott County Honor Roll, Gate City, Virginia; courtesy of Waymarking.com

SCOTT COUNTY HONOR ROLL

In Memory of Those Who Made
The Supreme Sacrifice

World War I

Artrip, George Dewey
Berry, William W.
Bishop, Beverly B.
Booher, Albert T.
Calhoun, James
Coley, William T.
Collins, Moscow
Dorton, James B.
Duncan, William B.
Fletcher, Charles Claren
Flecther, Earnest A.
Gilliam, Echol L.
Hammonds, Clayton
Hensley, John E.
Innis, Henry W.
Jenkins, Luther Kelly
Jessie, Joe W.
Keys, John P.
Lambert, Connie
Lane, Herman
Lane, Samuel D.
Maddux, Elbert
McNew, James E.
Meade, Houston Lee.
Meade, John W.
Moneyhun, Ralph C.
Neely, Wilburn P.
Palmer, James Malcolm
Pendleton, Robert W.
Porter, Walter D.
Powers, Charles B.
Price, Arthur
Rhoton, Benjamin
Salyer, William H.
Wells, Clyde
Willis, William Sterling

World War II

Alvis, Burley
Atkinson, Edgar Blannem
Babb, James H.
Baker, James E.
Baldwin, Eugene F.
Bartlett, Willie Edward
Beard, Byron Franklin
Berry, Kay L.
Bishop, Houston
Bledsoe, Ray
Blevins, Earnest Garfield
Bowen, Carl E.
Bowen, Vestel R.
Carter, Arnold Lee
Carter, Robert R.
Cassell, John H.
Castle, James S.
Cowden, Claude Gilmer
Cox, John Carmack
Culberston, Fred H.
Dishner, Dual F.
Dishner, Roy G.
Dockery, Conley E.
Dorton, Bobbie
Dykes, Malcolm Kelly, Jr.
Edwards, Troy O.
Elliott, Iver Preston
Falin, Arthur V.
Fields, Clarence
Ford, Owen H.
France, Robert H.
Fraysier, Delmer V.
Frazier, Edd C.
Gardner, Rubin J.
Gilliam, Carl Fred
Gilliam, James Calvin
Gilreath, K. H.
Goins, Charles E.
Grizzle, Raymond O.
Hall, Clyde H.
Harden, Howard
Harris, Glenn C.
Hartgrove, Loranza E.
Haynes, Clinton Edward
Herron, Kenneth R.
Hillman, John Wesley
Howington, Claude S.
Hughes, John F., Jr.
Jones, Carl B.
Jones, Edgar A.
Keith, Earl L.
Lane, Carl B.
Lane, Herman Quillen
Litton, John Alexander
Luster, Cecil A.
Lyons, Ballard J.
McConnell, Paris Edward
McConnell, William F.
McConnell, Willie E.
McDavid, Lewis L.
Marshall, Arthur A.
Moore, Clarence
Morrison, Charlie Canary
Noel, Roy G.
Osborne, John Kermit
Osborne, Worley Z.
Pendleton, Emmerson R.
Ramey, Logan B.
Roller, Burley Gaines
Ross, Alva Blaine
Sandidge, Edgar Ryland
Sandidge, Vernon Walker
Scott, Carl L., Jr.
Shelton, Hubert C.
Smith, Frederick R.
Strong, Carl E.
Thompson, George F.
Upchurch, Charlie B.
Whitley, Stewart
Winegar, Ernest John
Wolfenbarger, Benjamin
Wood, Claude Clayon

Erected Nov. 11, 1950 by Scott County Post No. 65

This post was written as a contribution to the Honor Roll Project, which was created by Heather Wilkinson Rojo, author of Nutfield Genealogy.