Hero Dog Park is open for business.
With a snip of the scissors, Mayor Patricia Hendricks Farmer opened the new dog park at Hamnett Memorial Park on Ohio Avenue on Aug. 15.
Hero Dog Park is the second dog park in Lawrence Township. The first dog park was opened in Village Park several years ago.
The dog park provides a safe, enclosed area for pets to run and play off-leash. There are two separate enclosed areas – one for small dogs and one for large dogs.
The proposal for a dog park at Hamnett Memorial Park was raised in 2021 as township officials mulled over how to find a better way to use the park, Farmer said.
“In attempting to repurpose the park without bringing in too much traffic and activity to the neighborhood, we believed it would be perfect for a dog park. A dog park is needed in south Lawrence,” she said.
Nancy Bergen, the superintendent of Recreation, suggested naming it Hero Dog Park after reading an article in The Lawrence Ledger about the late James Hewitt. He was a World War II veteran and a retired Lawrence Township police officer.
Hewitt befriended a captured German shepherd that had been trained as a war dog by the Japanese army. The dog was adopted by Hewitt and his U.S. Army unit, who named him Moose.
Hewitt and Moose developed a close bond that lasted until Hewitt was transferred to Hawaii for jungle training school. Moose was transferred to a U.S. Army base to attend K-9 training school.
Moose “entered” the U.S. Army and served alongside American soldiers. Hewitt kept track of Moose. He hoped to adopt the dog after the end of the war, but Moose was killed when he jumped on a hand grenade to protect his handler.
“We thought it would be great to honor all dogs, and more particularly, those service dogs who assist people daily or who do heroic acts to save lives,” Farmer said.
Moose is included on the list of hero dogs compiled by the Military Working Dog Heritage Museum, according to museum president Albert Johnson. Its website is www.mwdhm.org.
Meanwhile, Hewitt’s daughter, Cathy Burzymowski, was on hand to help cut the ribbon for Hero Dog Park – along with her own mini goldendoodle dog named Buttercup.
“My father would think this is great,” said Burzymowski, who lives in Hamilton Township. “All my life, I heard stories about Moose. My father was a great storyteller.”
The dog, whose original name was Kiska, had been abandoned on an island by the Japanese soldiers, she said. The dog was very hungry when the American soldiers found him. Kiska – renamed Moose – would only eat fish, but they taught him to eat meat.
Hewitt and the soldiers sneaked Moose onboard the ship that took them back to Pearl Harbor, she said. He wanted to keep the dog, but his request was denied – and that’s when Moose was sent off to the U.S. Army’s war dog school.
Burzymowski said she grew up in a family of dog lovers. Her father was the first dog catcher in Lawrence Township. Hewitt later became a police officer and the first Lawrence Township police detective.
“We had never been without a dog for more than five months,” Burzymowski said with a smile, adding “We rescued many dogs when my father was the dog catcher.”
