A LOS ANGELES-BASED columnist recognized Memorial Day by remembering a Newark native who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously after dying in battle in 1917.

In an essay for the Jewish news service JTA, Edmon J. Rodman suggested a “Star of David” memorial for Sgt. William Sawelson, who won the nation’s most prestigious military award for crawling several times through heavy machine gun fire to bring water to a wounded comrade.

“He was from Newark, so why not a parcel overlooking the nearby Passaic River, which many environmental groups as well as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are working to restore?” wrote Rodman.

Sawelson was one of three Jews, and one out of 126 servicemen, to receive a Medal of Honor in World War I.

Family members welcomed the idea.

“Of course I’d like to see a memorial. Who wouldn’t?” said his great-grandson, Adam Sawelson of Studio City, Calif. His cousin, Steven Sawelson, keeps his great-uncle’s treasured medal in a safe deposit box near his home in Palos Verdes, Calif.

“I have four children, and I tell them that the level of heroism expressed by him was so great that he got the highest medal in the land by an institution that would have preferred not to give it to a Jew,” Steven Sawelson told NJJN. “You should remember you have that type of heroism in your blood and it was recognized as such. It is a huge legacy and other people should know about it. It carries your last name.”

After dying in combat, Sgt. Sawelson was buried in a military cemetery in Romagne, France, with a Star of David on his tombstone.

— ROBERT WIENER

Sawelson, William, SGT