BELLEVILLE, Ill. (AP) — A Belleville East High School Boy Scout could see his project to create a local Vietnam veterans memorial dedicated by month’s end.
Neil Wegrzyn is a 17-year-old junior who has taken up the challenge as an Eagle Scout project.
The Belleville News-Democrat reports Wegrzyn has gathered information on 15 men from the Belleville area killed in the Vietnam War. He raised $4,500 for a black granite monument on which their names will be engraved. It will be placed in Walnut Hill Cemetery.
The idea came to him during an eight-grade trip to Washington, D.C. where he saw the Vietnam Memorial. His will be a miniature of the one in the capital.
Wegrzyn hopes to have a ceremony on Memorial Day.
