City Councilor Frank Baker and members of the memorial committee, UMass Boston, and Eversource gather around the Vietnam Memorial on Morrissey Boulevard.

An Eye on Crime–Vietnam War Memorial Protected

Donald Foye, senior network engineer in IT Communications and Infrastructure Services, enlisted in the United States Navy in 1967. Assigned to the USS Enterprise and attached to a jet fighter squadron, Foye served 18 months in Vietnam.

So when Foye learned of the vandalizing of the Vietnam War Memorial on Morrissey Blvd. in Dorchester, it was personal. Jamie Soule, manager of IT Operations in IT Communications and Infrastructure Services, was equally outraged.

“I realized it wouldn’t take much to mount a small surveillance camera at the site of the memorial,” he says. He thought that if the memorial was vandalized a second time, a camera could help police identify a suspect.

Soule proceeded to put together a team that would prove well-suited to the task: UMass Boston Chief of Police Donald Baynard; Boston City Councilor Frank Baker; IT’s Donald Foye; and Sullivan & McLaughlin, an electrical and technologies contracting company based in Boston.

The logistics of mounting the camera were complex. For starters, the memorial is situated on a state-owned road, so Councilor Baker was instrumental in paving the way for the project to proceed, also arranging to get Sullivan & McLaughlin to donate labor and wireless equipment. Eversource Utilities provided electrical services free of charge. And, of course, UMass Boston’s IT division, spearheaded by Soule, handled the technology back on campus.

The result: a small camera with an antenna was installed on a light pole situated at the site of the memorial. This antenna points to a second antenna, mounted on the roof of the Joseph P. Healey Library on the UMass Boston campus.

“Don connected the wireless antennas to the wired campus network,” says Soule, adding that the task was much more involved than met the eye.

“As a Vietnam veteran, it meant a lot to me to be able to help with this,” says Foye. “It was a great team effort with UMass Boston, the town of Dorchester, and the vendor.”

Sadly, the memorial was indeed vandalized a second time. However, images from the security cameras helped to identify the suspect.

Proud of the efforts made by each member of the UMass Boston team, Soule says, “I was the quarterback, but everyone on the team agreed that installing the cameras was well worth the effort it took. We all recognized that vandalizing a war memorial was disgraceful, but we all pulled together to make this happen.