Elderly couple honored for caring for long-neglected war memorial owned by NYC

A late elderly Brooklyn couple who voluntarily cared for an abandoned city-owned World War I memorial in a once-overgrown patch of park were honored Tuesday in a touching Veteran’s Day ceremony.

Williamsburg resident Theresa “Tish” Cianciotta and her World War II veteran husband Guido were celebrated as the loving longtime keepers of Memorial Gore, a set-up on a tiny patch of grass where 83 locals who died in the Great War are remembered.

The couple began caring for the small landmark in the 1980s, local community-board member Philip Caponegro told The Post.

“We want to keep their memory alive,” Caponegro, 71, told a crowd of roughly two dozen locals at the event.

After the couple died their 90s in 2021 and 2023, respectively, the park — located at the busy intersection of Bushwick, Metropolitan and Maspeth avenues — had once again become overgrown with weeds and overrun with homeless encampments, the community leader said.

Resident William Vega, a local community-board member and part of the volunteer group Friends of Cooper Park, then picked up where the pair left off — after a Post investigation in 2024 exposed the city ignoring the memorial’s upkeep.

“I love doing it,” Vega said Tuesday of the clean-up. “I love sitting here and watching neighbors enjoy their time’’ near it.

“The elders in this neighborhood are doing all the work,” he said. “Those who are [younger] are struggling to make ends meet — the rents are too high.”

Vega told The Post that the city’s neglect is a personal issue for him: He spent his early years in the San Juan Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, which was later razed to make way for Lincoln Center.

The Brooklyn green space, which was purchased by the city in 1894 for $2,500 and adorned with a sculpture by the Piccirilli Brothers of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC., is technically managed by NYC Parks.

But budget cuts by the Adams administration led to the neglect of the tiny memorial for years.

Vega said he has worked to have a “better personal relationship” with the Parks Department since he began maintaining the memorial and has received assistance in larger tasks such as fixing the park’s flagpole.

But Friends of Cooper Park still shells out “a lot more” than tens of thousands of dollars in maintenance costs, he said.

The volunteer park steward — who said he works seven days a week to clean up the area — told The Post he still regularly finds syringes tossed over the fence alongside bags of litter from passing cars. 

The park remains off-limits to the public except for Veterans Day and Memorial Day events, but the Cianciottas had a key to perform their clean-ups, as does Vega.

He said he plans to work to open the green space on some days to the public next spring, following a successful string of public openings made by “request” earlier this year.

State Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, who represents the area, told Tuesday’s gathering that the upkeep of Memorial Gore is a reflection of Williamsburg’s long history of the community coming together to “fight for what’s right.

“People look at this neighborhood a lot of the time from the real-estate perspective but not from the community perspective,” Gallagher said.

“This part of the neighborhood historically is Italian,’’ she said.

“We have tons of Italian veterans that experienced so much prejudice and hatred, but they’re such a core part of the US Army.’’

A Parks Department rep told The Post in a statement, “We’re grateful to the work of local volunteers to supplement our regular maintenance of Memorial Gore.

“Since 2024, Parks has engaged more than 1.2 Million volunteers throughout the city to help care for our parks.”