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Briarcliff Honors Fallen Korean War Hero
BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y. -- It’s been 65 years since Briarcliff Manor’s John Kelvin Koelsch died, but the village is finally giving the Korean War hero his due.
The U.S. Navy officer, was born in London, but attended the Scarborough School with his two brothers, Peter and Philip, in the early 1930s, according to local historian Karen Kotter Smith.
The school, built by financier and assistant secretary of the treasury Frank A. Vanderlip for his own children and the children of his friends, is now The Clear View School.
Koelsch’s father, Henry, was a protégé of Vanderlip’s, and they were appa…
Beacon Historians Mark Restoration Of Famed American Jurist's Grave
BEACON, N.Y. -- James Kent’s grave marker in a Beacon cemetery was cracked in four places and so covered with soil that it couldn’t be seen, say local historians.
Kent, an American jurist and legal scholar, was born in 1763 in Fredericksburgh (then in Dutchess County, but now part of Putnam County).
When Kent’s modest gravestone in St. Luke’s Cemetery off Wolcott Avenue first toppled over in 1939, it grabbed the attention of the local newspaper, which ran a picture of his grave with the headline “Here Lies Beacon’s Most Illustrious Son.”
Actually, Kent, who died in 1847, had few ties to Be…
