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Voices & Opinion

POV: This Memorial Day, Remember BU’s Fallen Heroes by Visiting the New Online Honor Wall

Initiative, led by three Terriers, ensures that those who fought in our nation’s wars are never forgotten

For Memorial Day last year, I shared with BU Today a personal story of how my aged mother, who forgot so many things as she suffered from dementia, always remembered her childhood neighbor, Private First Class Charlie Pohonich. An Army infantryman, Pohonich died fighting in the Pacific Theater in World War II.

This year, I want to share the inspiring story of the public-spirited efforts of three Class of 2025 Boston University graduates. Working as a team, they created an online Honor Wall to remember Boston University’s faculty, staff, alumni, and students who died in our nation’s wars and to help ensure these heroes are never forgotten.

By way of background, for too many years BU had no record of the members of our community who made the supreme sacrifice. While scattered mentions of fallen alumni appeared in university publications and individual memories remained, Boston University lacked a consolidated memorial record honoring the Terriers who gave their all in service to the country.

Earlier this month, BU’s Division of Military Education, which oversees ROTC activities, launched a website honoring the 366 members of the Boston University community who died in 20th and 21st century conflicts. These include World War I (28 deaths), World War II (221), Korea (15), Vietnam (99), and the War on Terror (3).

There is also a section denoting the six BU members who were POW/MIAs during World War II. While information in many cases is not complete, entries, to the extent possible, include the deceased’s name, rank and branch of service, hometown, date of birth, school at BU, and cause and location of death. In some cases, a photograph and other commentary are included.

The Honor Wall came about thanks to the efforts and passion of Michael Tozeski (Pardee’25), a Boston University staffer in the Office of Residential Life, and at the time, a graduate student in the Pardee School of Global Studies. In the summer of 2024, I had the pleasure of meeting Michael and he and I discussed the fact that BU had no record of the University’s fallen heroes. The initial impression I formed of Michael remains true to this day: he is personable, thoughtful, and considerate. And I sensed he would not rest until he found a way to honor those who gave so much. From our first meeting, he made a deep personal commitment to do so.

Working on a volunteer basis and drawing on his previous experience as a research analyst, Michael devised a plan and patiently combed through archival material and other original sources, primarily at Mugar Memorial Library. He further refined his research by learning from experts, like Sean Noel (CAS’94, MET’02), University archivist at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, and BU faculty, like Robert Murowchick, a College of Arts & Sciences lecturer in archaeology. Notably, Michael found the bulk of the names of the deceased by combing through hard copies of BU publications, particularly Bostonia, that included notices about service members’ deaths. This work was manually intensive and required painstaking attention to detail. As he compiled names from these sources, he then cross-referenced them against available federal, state, and local resources.

After working for months, Michael compiled the information, and it then needed to be readily accessible to the public. The Division of Military Education’s website was the logical place to host it. Seniors Kyron Kern (CAS’25, Sargent’25) and Peter Barto (Pardee’25), both BU ROTC students, and now newly commissioned officers in the Army and Navy, respectively, enthusiastically designed the webpage interface as they became information technology specialists. They labored many hours as they took Michael’s impressive datasets and made them available online in a user-friendly format.

Thanks to the hard work of Michael, Kyron, and Peter, our BU heroes now have a place of honor. Just as my late mother always remembered Private First Class Charlie Pohonich, the Division of Military Education’s Honor Wall means that BU’s heroes will never be forgotten.

While we have worked diligently to make complete and accurate information available to the public on our Honor Wall, we welcome input to correct any errors or omissions. Please email dmecomms@bu.edu and cc: jdwjr@bu.edu.

John D. Woodward, Jr., is a professor of the practice of international relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. A US Army veteran, he is director of BU’s Division of Military Education, overseeing ROTC activities. He is a former officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He can be reached at jdwjr@bu.edu. 

“POV” is an opinion page that provides timely commentaries from students, faculty, and staff on a variety of issues: on-campus, local, state, national, or international. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be about 700 words long, should contact today@bu.edu. BU Today reserves the right to reject or edit submissions. The views expressed are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of Boston University.