Negotiations for Armistice Day Tragedy Memorial at ‘Impasse’

It appears that in the case of the Centralia Armistice Day Tragedy, time cannot heal all wounds.

Discussions between stakeholders about adding a second memorial of the tragedy — a clash between Legionnaires and the International Workers of the World on Nov. 11, 1919, that resulted in six dead — to Washington Park have broken down. Both sides have each proposed their own design for a monument to go next to The Sentinel statue in the park that pays tribute to the four Legionnaires killed during the fracas.  

City of Centralia staff have said they would only install one monument in the park if a consensus could be reached as to its design and inscription. Members of the Centralia City Council appear unwilling to step into the fray to make the decision. Mayor Lee Coumbs said prior to the public comment portion of Tuesday’s city council meeting that, “This is a decision that will be made by you. It will not be made by us. … We are not going to sit here and say ‘this is okay, and this is wrong.’ You have to come up with a conclusion.”

Representatives from both sides of the debate gave brief comments following Coumbs’ preamble. Most acknowledged the good faith arguments of their opponents, but nobody offered a mutually agreeable path forward.

“I think we’re at an impasse,” Peter Lahmann said on Wednesday. Lahmann spoke Tuesday on behalf of the Thurston-Lewis-Mason Central Labor Council. “We’ve been working on this since January. I see a political statement on one side and a historical statement on the other, and I see a lack of resolve on the city council. This is about the sixth or seventh time over the past 100 years this issue has come up, and we might not be the ones to surmount that hill.”

Lahmann repeated his assertion more than once Tuesday that the proposal backed by the labor council and local American Legion Post 17 is based on history, while the one proposed by the IWW is more of a political statement. Theirs is not a bad proposal, Lahmann said, but it would not serve the purpose of trying to heal old wounds.

Dylan Brooks, a member of the Olympia chapter of the IWW, said Tuesday that his organization would like to place a bronze plaque near The Sentinel and that the IWW would cover the total cost. That monument would feature the IWW logo and list the eight men “unjustly imprisoned” as a result of the tragedy. It is those two words that are deal breakers for the labor council and others.

“We feel this inscription listing names of the union victims begins and goes a long way towards healing the past 100 years,” Brooks said. “This is an important event that still resonates today. While this is still local history, it’s also national and international history.”

Lahmann believes the city council should weigh in with a proposed compromise, if not its own proposal for a monument. While that could still happen, the odds of council members picking sides remains slim. Mayor Pro-tem Max Vogt has attended many of the meetings held monthly by an ad-hoc committee seeking to commemorate the centennial, but did not speak on the matter Tuesday evening.

“They’re sitting there in the judge position,” Lahmann said. “If you go to court, you have two different people sitting out there and a judge makes the decision. … When we went in front of the (Parks Board), I could see them not wanting to make a decision because they weren’t familiar with the subject, but some of the council people have been around long enough to know the story.”

Separate from the rift over a potential monument, the Lewis County Historical Museum tentatively plans to hold a reception on June 27 to mark the opening of a special exhibit featuring artifacts and photos from November 1919, some of which have not previously been made available for public viewing.