New Kensington-Arnold officials promise repairs to dilapidated veterans memorial
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As they’ve gotten older, Michele Eckman and her husband, Richard, don’t travel back to the Alle-Kiski Valley from their home outside of Dallas as often as they used to.
So when they came to the area in June, they made a point of stopping by Valley High School in Richard’s hometown of New Kensington to see the “Veterans of Valley High Memorial.” It includes his name on a brick recognizing his service in the Marine Corps from 1969 to 1970 after his 1967 graduation.
It was the first time they’d seen the memorial.
They were shocked to see it in “shambles,” said Michele Eckman, a Lower Burrell native.
“The flags were tattered. Half the bricks were sitting off to the side in a stack. One area had grass growing between the bricks,” she said. “It hurt me to see my husband’s reaction to that. He’s a Vietnam veteran. It just ripped open my heart.”
Valley High School Principal Jon Banko and New Kensington-Arnold Superintendent Chris Sefcheck each said Thursday the memorial will be repaired.
“We are having that whole area redone,” Sefcheck said in an email. “We would like to have the landscaping in that vicinity completely redone.”
The memorial sits outside the gymnasium entrance to the school, between the two pedestrian bridges over Little Pucketa Creek. Those bridges are in the process of being replaced, and Banko said the memorial will be redone once the bridge work is finished.
“It’s a mess,” he said. “My expectation is moving forward once the bridge project is done there will be attention paid and it will look better than it did.”
The memorial was not fully finished when a dedication ceremony was held nearly five years ago, in November 2019.
Honoring veterans who attended Valley High School, the memorial was placed where a Ten Commandments monument once stood. Following the settlement of a lawsuit, the monument was removed in March 2017 and relocated from the public school to Mary Queen of Apostles School on Freeport Road in New Kensington, where it was also dedicated in 2019.
Students in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps helped build the veterans memorial with support from Allegheny Valley Habitat for Humanity and a $6,000 donation from Siemens.
The memorial includes bricks engraved with the names of veterans who attended Valley High School. It also has, or had, flags for the Coast Guard, Air Force, Marines and Navy.
While Michele Eckman said the flags were torn and tattered during their visit in June, no flags were flying Thursday. Banko said they were taken down and will be replaced.
On Thursday, the bricks appeared to be in a wave, some heaved up, with grass and weeds growing throughout. Not every brick is inscribed with a name; some were missing, and others with and without names were dislodged.
Michele Eckman said they found her husband’s brick sitting in a stack off to the side.
They haven’t spoken with anyone from the district.
“When we were there, there was nobody at the school,” she said.
They would like to see the memorial cleaned up to offer respect to veterans.
“We owe so much to our Vietnam vets and all the other vets who never really got recognized,” she said.
The school board’s buildings and grounds committee will discuss the memorial when it next meets, Sefcheck said. A date for that meeting will be known on Aug. 6.
“Everything will be addressed,” he said.
Board member Bob Pallone, who chairs buildings and grounds, said Thursday he was not aware that the memorial was in such poor condition.
He said the Eckmans’ concerns are understandable.
“We owe them an answer,” he said.
“It shouldn’t be in bad shape. We should keep it right,” Pallone said. “You have my 100% commitment that will happen. I agree it should be tended to.”