Dear Friends and Veterans,

I wish to invite you to a solemn and important celebration in Hereford , Texas , on August 8, 2009, at the site that was an Italian POW camp during World War 2. This event will mark the beginning of the restoration of the “votive” Chapel built by the Italian POWs, and recently vandalized by unknowns.
The Chapel will be brought back to its former beauty and presented to the community of Hereford, to thank them for having kept the memory represented by this historical site alive for these last 63 years. Without the community of Hereford, Dimmitt and Castro County one more artifact of our history might have been forever lost, and with it an important part of the Italian and American Peoples.
The History made not of great battles and large numbers of people killed, but a History of two Peoples, the victors and the vanquished, who meet through the opposite sides of a barbed wire, and gain respect and friendship for each other through the routine events of everyday life in a rural community.

We want our project to be a message for the newer generations: we should not only celebrate history as a string of dates and places and great people born and died, but also the many unknown soldiers and civilians who overcame preconceived ideologies and planted the seeds of pacification.
We also want to promote a strong feeling of cooperation with the American people, and remind as many people as we can of how long our friendship has been, and of the difficult tests it was able to withstand. The Chapel is also a tangible monument of Italian art, not brought overseas by ship, but spiritually carried into this Land in the minds and the hearts of Italian Artisans: a reminder and an example to all the Italians who now live and work here, day after day offering their contribution to this great Country.

I am looking forward to meet with you, as it would make us very proud to have you at the ceremony.

Most respectfully,
Vincenzo Arcobelli