A few days ago, a band of volunteers arrived at a little hillock in Druid Hill Park to plant a dozen swamp white oak trees to one side of the Maryland Zoo at the Grove of Remembrance, a World War I-era memorial.

The group was led by Rhys Guilfoyle, a member of Scout Troop 5 and a student at the Community School in Remington. He had backing from an interested citizen who found $2,000 in grant money from the Pritzker Foundation. The tree planting was also accomplished with the blessing of the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks.

“I’ve planted trees in Herring Run Park before,” said Guilfoyle, who lives in Ednor Gardens-Lakeside. “It’s important to restore the grove to what it was.”

Ted Martello, who works for the Tree Baltimore section of the city’s Forestry Division, said, “Let us use trees and tree plantings to celebrate lives and lives that have been lost.”

A public ceremony will be held at 4 p.m. Monday, Veterans Day, to mark the tree planting at this site with a noteworthy history. The new batch of trees was added to replace ones that had died.

The grove stands as a testament to the women who lost family members during the war that the U.S. entered in 1917. It was a traumatic experience for Baltimore because a local unit, the 313th Regiment of the 79th Division, fought so bravely at a French hill called Montfaucon. Baltimore took a heavy hit in that conflict.

Death was a constant reminder in 1918. Thousands of Baltimoreans, many in their 20s and 30s, died in the October 1918 influenza pandemic.

The Sun reported the grove was dedicated Oct. 8, 1919, less than a year after the Armistice. Women attending the War Mothers of America’s national convention left the Hotel Emerson downtown and boarded cars for the trip to Druid Hill. These women would come to be known as the Gold Star Mothers.

The creation of the Grove of Remembrance was a big deal. Cardinal James Gibbons blessed it in 1919. Jean Jules Jusserand, the French ambassador to the U.S., was the guest of honor.

The trees were donated by the state of Maryland, one for each state. The city of Baltimore promised to maintain them. The original oaks were planted at a distance of 25 feet from each other. In later years, other trees were planted to commemorate other conflicts.

The original dedication ceremony drew a crowd. Aged Civil War veterans as well as 1,000 schoolchildren held an oversized American flag.

“Some of the scenes were unforgettable,” The Sun reported as it described women planting trees in memory of the sons they had lost. “The silence was broken only by the sobs of the Gold Star Mothers.”

The paper also reported that at the end of the procession of vehicles entering the park were 20 wounded veterans who were still being cared for at Fort McHenry. The fort had been converted into a huge military hospital with temporary buildings spread about on what are now lawns.

The sentiment for the Grove of Remembrance did not disappear. By Mother’s Day in 1927, former first lady Edith Wilson, the widow of President Woodrow Wilson, officiated at a groundbreaking ceremony for a permanent memorial stone-and-slate pavilion at the grove.

Merchant Israel Rosenfeld provided $10,000 for this memorial to his son, Merrill, an Army lieutenant and Baltimore attorney who died in the Argonne Forest on Oct. 16, 1918, and was buried in Baltimore in 1921. Rosenfeld lived near the park at 2221 Eutaw Place and won the Distinguished Service Cross.

While fighting near the Meuse River, “he displayed the greatest of bravery and coolness,” his citation said. “He met his death while leading a group that silenced an enemy machine gun menacing his right flank.”

The Sun reported that Rabbi Morris Lazaron officiated at the lieutenant’s funeral at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. President Warren G. Harding and Vice President Calvin Coolidge sent sympathy letters read at his service. A delegation of War Mothers walked behind the horse-drawn artillery caisson as it moved from the Rosenfeld residence to the Madison Avenue Temple.

Rabbi Lazaron spoke again, nearly six years later, when ground was broken for the Grove of Remembrance pavilion. The memorial, made of Maryland stone and slate, was designed by architects Palmer and Lamdin to resemble, vaguely, a French farmhouse typical of the Meuse-Argonne area.

The pavilion, now nearly 100 years old, shows signs of mortar and beam deterioration.

David Minges, who learned about the grove from a Sun article, visited the site and was concerned about its upkeep. “I saw a need and the Pritzker grant provided an opportunity,” he said. “Perhaps the restoration of the pavilion could continue.”