Derby veterans and residents gathered Saturday at Frank P. Witek Memorial Park on Sentinel Hill Road to rededicate the memorial plaques honoring the fallen war hero.
Marine Corps PFC. Witek was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during a battle on Guam on Aug. 3, 1944.
The original bronze plaques at his memorial were stolen last November, probably for sale as scrap metal.
Other war memorial plaques were also stolen at the same time in Ansonia and Shelton and have since been replaced.
The Valley Community Foundation set up a fund to raise money for replacement plaques, which are made of stone with laser etchings to make them less attractive to scrap metal thieves.
“The rededication of these new monuments is a testimony to the memory of PFC. Frank Peter Witek,” said Derby Mayor Anthony Staffieri at the event.
According to his medal citation, Witek’s platoon came under a fierce Japanese attack during the Battle of Finegayan.
Armed with a Browning Automatic Rifle and hand grenades, Witek repeatedly attacked Japanese positions, killing nearly 20 enemy soldiers and knocking out a machine gun nest, before he was killed by enemy rifle fire.
His courageous actions were credited with covering the evacuation of other wounded marines and reducing the enemy’s firepower enough to allow his platoon to achieve its objective.
Click here to read the full text of the Medal of Honor citation.
Witek was born in Derby on Dec. 10, 1921. His family moved to Chicago in 1930, but when he enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he listed Derby as his hometown.
“He was an American hero. He was a Derby hero,” said Staffieri.
Valley Community Foundation President James E. Cohen thanked the many people from the community who contributed to the plaque replacement fund.
He noted that many people in the Lower Naugatuck Valley were angry when they learned the plaques had been stolen.
“But the people of the Valley have always been able to count on each other,” he said.
Click here for more photos from the event from the Electronic Valley.
