Blue Star Memorial By-Way marker

Location: In front of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum, at the corner of Water St & High St, Portsmouth, VA 23704.

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:05pm

Transcription of marker:

Blue Star Memorial By-Way

A tribute to the Armed Forces of America
T.D.V.F. of Garden Clubs

National Garden Clubs, Inc.

My impressions: shrug What’s up here? I had to do some research on this one. Because on its own, it’s a marker, a tribute to the military, which would be fairly unremarkable in a region with such a high military presence as this one. But there was this connection, this remembrance of having seen somewhat similar markers elsewhere on Markeroni. So I had to do some digging.

Wikipedia had a short stub article, “Blue Star Memorial Highway,” which mentioned memorial highways to the armed forces and then mentioned that they had been started by the National Council of State Garden Clubs, now known as National Garden Clubs, Inc. That looked familiar! They’re mentioned at the bottom of the marker.

My Google-fu sent me to a page from the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs, Inc., which explained:

Through the years three different types of Blue Star Memorial Markers have been adopted. They are The Blue Star Memorial Highway Marker which can be placed along dedicated highways. The second is the Blue Star Memorial Marker which can be placed on other than dedicated Highways, such as National cemeteries or Veterans Medical Centers. The third is the Blue Star Memorial By-Way Marker which is a plaque intended for garden settings, such as parks and civic and historical grounds.

Aha! And this was outside the museum. I only had one mystery left to solve…the initials T.D.V.F.

My Google-fu came up blank! Fortunately, I had the idea: could T.D. be “Tidewater District?” Sure enough, that turned out to be the clue that solved the last riddle: Tidewater District of the Virginia Federation of Garden Clubs was the group that had placed this marker. I couldn’t find any information about the placing of this particular marker, but there were a couple of pages about them placing another by-way marker at Albert G. Horton Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery in Suffolk in 2005. I guess that will be a snarf for another day!

Notes for future snarfers: This marker is right next to the Naval Shipyard Museum marker, which I posted about yesterday, and near a marker for the Revolutionary War at Portsmouth (facing Water St, parallel to the side of the museum), which I’ll post about in a few days.

Markeroni status: This marker is awaiting inclusion in the Markeroni database.

Update (6/7): This marker was included in the Markeroni database yesterday and I logged my visit this morning.