Greeley – The battle cry “Remember the Maine” still echoes in a local hardware store, right next to the customer-service desk and a display of work gloves.
It’s there that a plaque made from the famous battleship USS Maine, which was sunk in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898, rests to the puzzlement of customers at the Offen Ace Hardware.
“A lot of people will say, ‘How did that get here?”‘ said Offen employee and ex-Navy man John Self.
Offen employees are all well versed on the unlikely story of how an artifact honoring the death of 260 sailors who went down with the battleship ended up in a cramped corner of a busy haven of do-it-yourselfers.
The destruction of the Maine also has remained somewhat of a mystery. Considered one of the mightiest battleships at the time, it went down after being shattered by two separate explosions.
The U.S. Navy concluded at the time that the ship was sunk by a mine that ignited the forward magazines, but it couldn’t fix responsibility on any individual or government.
Still, the sinking led to the Spanish-American War, which came at the urging of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. He famously told his newspaper’s illustrator, Frederic Remington, who wanted to leave Havana, to “please remain.”
“You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war,” Hearst said.
Later studies said the Maine may have sunk because of a coal-bunker fire near one its ammunition magazines. The Maine was raised for a short while, and many pieces of it were later preserved, including as many as 1,000 or so metal plaques.
Enter the Greeley chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The group acquired the plaque as part of its mission of historical preservation, said Chris Ruth, a DAR member and co- owner of the hardware store.
“DAR has always been interested in keeping history alive,” she said.
The Greeley DAR donated the plaque to the Weld County Public Library in 1916.
The plaque was displayed for several years before it was moved to the Greeley Museum, where it eventually found a home in storage, Ruth said. It was rediscovered and dedicated back to the Weld library.
Then about four years ago, while the library was being remodeled, Weld officials called the DAR and asked that the group take back the plaque, Ruth said.
She got a call from a DAR official asking that the plaque be put in her hardware store for a short time.
“I thought it would be a small plaque, but then they showed up with this all wrapped up in a bungee cord in the back of a pickup,” Ruth said.
The piece of history has been placed at several spots in the store, which is proud to house the plaque, say the owners and employees.
Still, said Self, “I think it belongs in a proper setting like a museum.”
Staff writer Monte Whaley can be reached at 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com.
