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What: 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Civil War Soldiers Monument and Memorial Day celebration

Where: Mount Zion Reformed Church, Pavia, Bedford County

When: Beginning at 9 a.m. Monday with a parade of veterans going through town and up to the cemetery; church ceremony to follow

Dress: Period attire is optional.

PAVIA There are American flags everywhere in this tiny village - on front porches and in front lawns, along fences and up the driveway to the Mount Zion Reformed Church and its cemetery, where pride and patriotism for citizens past and present live on.

On Monday, the Pavia Veterans Association and people from all over the country will celebrate an extra-special Memorial Day there. With period clothing and mid-19th century hymns and music from the Fishertown Band for a backdrop, the 100th anniversary of the 7-foot Civil War Soldiers Monument will be celebrated.

The names of 16

soldiers who died on battlefields, in prisons and hospitals during the Civil War are printed on the four sides of the gray stone. They are names still familiar to the village and its surrounding areas - Imler, Dibert and Corle.

"They never came back home," said Nancy Strawbridge, assistant secretary of the Pavia Veterans Association.

The Pavia patriotism didn't just begin with the May 29, 1909, unveiling of the monument by a 20-year-old nurse.

Just a few feet away from the stone lies the grave of Leonard Corle, a Revolutionary War private. In fact, soldiers from that conflict all the way through Vietnam are buried at the cemetery on top of a hill. There still are seven living World War II veterans, including George Robert Shaffer, president of the veterans association.

"This community here, I think we're more patriotic than anywhere else I've ever been," said Shaffer, who has studied the his-

tory of the area's people and has written two books. "It's just a thing that's never changed. If you want to see Memorial Day like it was 100 years ago, you come out here because it hasn't changed. Only the people have changed."

The Memorial Day celebrations likely will not disappear, said Veterans Association treasurer and chaplain Maynard Corle.

"It's been handed down through tradition," he said. "It'll soon be passed down again."

The main speaker in 1909 was 70-year-old Judge Jacob Longenecker, born in the Morrisons Cove area of Blair County. He served as a lieutenant in the Civil War and was imprisoned briefly in Andersonville Prison, where at least two of the 16 soldiers who are memorialized on the monument perished. Longenecker survived and became a lawyer and then judge, later serving in the House and Senate.

This year's speakers include Bill Snyder, an attorney in Bedford who will dress as Abraham Lincoln in honor of the 200th anniversary of the president's birthday. Snyder will read excerpts from the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's second inaugural address and the Bixby Letter, written to a mother whose sons perished in the Civil War.

Speaker Bill Mock will dress in Union blues and will bring a reproduction of the 138th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry flag, a regiment that included many Bedford County men. More than 20 members of Mock's family were soldiers in the Civil War. His message will be "Our Assignment."

"The 100th anniversary of the Pavia Civil War Monument is significant," Mock said. "These 16 soldiers had given their all and were never to return home even after death. The monument serves as a constant reminder of the sacrifices that others have made for the freedom we have today."

Memory, tradition and patriotism go together in Pavia, Shaffer said.

"Memory is that thing which sets us apart as human beings," Shaffer believes. "Tradition is a country's memory. It helps its people to be aware of themselves as citizens and of their responsibilities to their fellow citizens.

"The purpose of Memorial Day is two-fold. First, to remember our honored dead. And second, to recall the heritage of freedom of our great nation."

Mirror Staff Writer Wendy McCardle is at 946-7520.