Not fade away

The stories behind the names on the memorial fountain in Veterans Memorial Park, By Jeffrey Page Warwick - They were just two guys from Warwick who marched off to their respective wars and never returned. No streets are named for them, no holidays proclaimed, but they’re the men for whom the Excelsior Hose Company dedicated the memorial fountain in Veterans Memorial Park in 1949. In their times, Roy B. McCoy and Joseph L. Prochnicki had been members of the Excelsiors. McCoy was a member of his church choir and died in World War I. Prochnicki was an altar boy who was killed in the second world war. Neither lived to see age 27. Lately, village officials have been conferring with a planner about improvements to the park including the rehabilitation of the lawn that slopes up the long hill toward the picnic area and the fountain. Mayor Michael Newhard said the McCoy-Prochnicki fountain and the park’s other memorials won’t be disturbed during work on the park. In addition to the fountain, the park is home to stone tributes to Warwick firefighters, to all Warwick veterans, and to the seven people from Warwick and Greenwood Lake who were killed on Sept. 11. “All the memorials will remain in place,” Newhard said. Who were these two men whose names appear on the rusting plaque of a fountain whose faucet is capped and whose slanted roof could use some paint?