Local residents have fought and died in conflicts dating back to the Revolution. We remember, and share their stories.
Leonard Sowersby Morange was the first Bronxville resident to be killed in World War I.
Dale Hanson Walker, whose grandmother Leila was Morange's sister, said Morange was remembered by his family as a young man curious about airplanes and a talented musician.
Morange was an expert piano player who could hear a song once and replay it. He was inspired by legendary composer Jerome Kern, a fellow Bronxville resident and a longtime friend of his father, Edward A. Morange, who was a well-known set designer. Walker said that Kern wrote "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in the Morange home and had hoped Leonard Morange would return from the war and possibly join him in musical ventures.
After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Morange went on to Yale University to study English literature. In 1917, he enlisted in the American Expeditionary Forces.
Impatient to learn to fly and to see action, Morange transferred to the Royal Flying Corps in Canada and quickly rose to lieutenant in the Royal Air Force within the 55th Training Squadron. His brother Irving, two years his elder, who also enlisted, was sent to France to fly reconnaissance missions behind the German lines. Morange was such a capable pilot that he was named a flight instructor. He never saw battle, but taught many pilots to fly. While training a pilot in France, another student pilot crashed his plane into theirs, killing them both.
In 1918, he was buried in Shotwick, Great Britain.
Although it has been nearly 100 years since his death, his extended family still participates in the village's Memorial Day ceremonies. Walker marchesand serves as the family curator of his medals, photographs and letters.
In 1938 a small park near the train station at Parkway Road was named Leonard Morange Square. It commemorates all the fallen, with monuments added over the years for those who died in World War II, the Vietnam War and the Korean War.