The Floriculture Department War Memorial trail in the Cornell Botanic Gardens Arboretum commemorates Floriculture students who were killed in WWI and WWII. On the trail there is a bench that provides a quiet place for reflection. The bench was donated in memory of Karl Goldsmith ’47, CALS, and his wife, Marianne Michaelis Goldsmith, ’46 Human Ecology. Karl was a WWII veteran and served as an interrogator in Military Intelligence. The bench was the location of a Veterans Day 2020 interview regarding this collection of memorials around the Cornell campus and featured on page 9 of the Spring/Summer 2011 edition of Verdant Views, the Magazine of Cornell Botanic Garden. The bench is located on the Johnston Trail (between Forest Home Drive and Arboretum Road) just below the second parking area as you enter Arboretum Road. See the Botanic Garden Trail map.
Just across the path from the bench there is also a plaque which lists the Floriculture students who died in World War I and II. The plaque reads:
“We dedicate this site and the surrounding woodland in the Cornell Plantations to the memory of these students in the Floriculture Department who died in World War I and World War II.
1917 – 1918
Elseworth Holeman Dederer ‘16 Paul L. Kennedy ‘17
1941–1945
Anthony John Andrulis ‘44 – Bror Henry Anderson ‘33 – Lawrence Joseph Bilon ‘40
William John Gillies ‘45 – Jacob Stephan Gordon ‘44 – Fred John Heimes ‘40
William Preston Hicks ‘33 – William Paul Joseph ‘42 – Edward Thomas Kelly ‘41
George Henry Kern ‘31 – Donald Herbert Moon ‘40 – Albert Horton Sayer ‘37
Fred Henry Stenstrom ‘39 – Henry Lawrence Thompson ‘40
Phi Alpha XI, The Floriculture Club”
The Cornell Botanic Gardens were established in 1935 as the Cornell Arboretum, later renamed Cornell Plantations, and in 2016, became Cornell Botanic Gardens. It is a living museum that serves as an outdoor classroom for instruction across seven Cornell colleges. They are open dawn to dusk every day, and offer guided tours in all but the dead of winter. [49][15][50]