Sentinel 6-11-14

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SPECIAL SECTION Check out our Out and About guide and get the most out of your summer! Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Vol. 19 No. 27

Voyager Media Publications • shorewoodsentinel.com

WILL COUNTY

COMMUNITY

Bearing the Battle Local group trying to raise money for national cemetery statue in Elwood BY NICK REIHER MANAGING EDITOR

nreiher@buglenewspapers.com @JolietILNews

SUBMITTED PHOTOS

BY KRIS STADALSKY FOR THE BUGLE When World War II veteran 1st Lt. Jean Klimek signed on to take an Honor Flight out of Midway Airport to Washington, D.C., she never expected to arrive back in Chicago to such fanfare. “I didn’t know there was going to be such a greeting on this end,” said the 91-year-old former Army nurse. Klimek was one of about 90 World War II veterans who were part of an Honor Flight Chicago trip June 4 to Our Nation’s Capital, where they visited war memorials and monuments all at no charge to the veterans. Klimek was more worried that those picking her up on her return had been left waiting too long. The flight landed an hour late because of rain, and she felt it was taking too long to disembark the plane. But once off, she was escorted in a wheelchair by a U.S. sailor. People were lined up on either side of a receiving line clapping, cheering, waving flags and holding welcome home signs.

SEE ‘HONOR’ PAGE 2

(TOP) 1st Lt. Jean Klimek Sitting on the wheel of a bomber during WW II in Okinawa, Japan. (BOTTOM) Klimek is greeted by the military during her trip to Washington, D.C.

Rich Duran is on a mission. And he’s tired, worn down by federal bureaucracy that has made the seemingly easy task of erecting a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the 16th president’s namesake national cemetery in Elwood one of Herculean proportions. It was, after all, Lincoln who created the concept of a national veteran’s cemetery as he orated those famous words in the Gettysburg Address. But the fight by Duran, Peotone mayor and former regional schools superintendent, took longer than the Civil War. After six years of back and forth cutting of red tape, the Department of Veterans Affairs approved erecting a life-sized (roughly 6 feet 4 inches) bronze statue at the national cemetery in Elwood. The problem now, Duran told the Will County Board Finance Committee June 3, is that many of the groups that signed on for the project in the beginning are clinging to life themselves, as they shake themselves off from the recession. The Support Committee, which isn’t and cannot be affiliated with the national cemetery, has raised about $44,000 of the $110,000 needed for the project, including a bench surrounding the statue that would be crafted from local limestone. Most of the materials would be local, Duran told the committee as he showed them a statuette created by The Friends of >> SEE BATTLE | PAGE 3


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