Remembering Shepherd’s World War I Generation

A bronze memorial at what is now Shepherd University preserves the names of thirteen men who gave their lives during World War I. Beneath them, the inscription also honors 197 men of the college who served between 1917 and 1919. Together, these words record both the breadth of the college community’s participation and the individual losses that followed.

The United States entered the war in 1917, joining a conflict that had already devastated much of Europe. For young men in communities such as Shepherdstown, military service could mean leaving familiar classrooms, jobs and families for training camps and assignments far from home. The plaque does not describe the circumstances of each man’s service or death. It preserves their names, allowing them to remain part of the institution’s history.

Across its upper edge, an eagle spreads its wings above a shield. Below that national symbol are the names of individuals remembered by their own college community. The memorial brings the scale of a world war into a local setting, where loss was measured in people whose absence could be felt.

The inscription identifies the classes of 1918 and 1919 as presenting the tribute to their alma mater. That detail gives the memorial a personal significance: students from the wartime years helped establish a lasting remembrance of those who served and those who did not return.

More than a century later, the plaque continues that work. It asks little of the passerby beyond a pause to read, but in that pause, thirteen names become more than part of a historical count. They remain people whom this college chose to remember.