Veteran creates his own memorial in LaGrange Township
Like all veterans, Memorial Day means a lot to Virgil L. Smith.
This year he has something special to show visitors at his home on Vermont Street in LaGrange Township.
He has completed a beautiful memorial for his family. Of his parents` 13 children, seven of the eight boys served in the armed forces during World War II, the occupation of Europe and in Korea.
His brother Don was killed on Christmas Day 1953 in Korea, said Smith, who was a junior in high school in Glenville, W.Va., at the time.
“The sheriff and the pastor came,” he said. “When the sheriff came you knew it wasn`t good news.”
Smith, who volunteered for the draft in 1956, was a military police officer in the Pacific Islands when the United States conducted atomic tests.
After going to college, he eventually followed a sister to Northeast Ohio and taught school, first in Columbia Station and later in Elyria. He retired from Elyria High in 1982.
Photographs of all seven brothers are included in the memorial including Don, Virgil, Ford, Levi, Paige, Layke and Willard.
A farmer friend gave him a millstone that he cut in half for the backyard memorial. He did all of the carving himself.
Smith, who is a published poet, also wrote a poem “Just Common Soldiers,” which is part of the memorial.
His only surviving sibling is Ford, who served in Germany in the late 1940s, and is still living in North Ridgeville.
Now 73, Virgil Smith said the memorial means a lot to him, especially this time of year.
“It`s a labor of love,” he said. “As long as there is strife, people have to pay the price - freedom isn`t free.”
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Filed by May 24th, 2009 in Top Stories.
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