Pennsylvania Wall of Fallen Heroes

A mobile memorial that pays tribute to Pennsylvanians killed in Afghanistan and Iraq will be displayed in Lebanon later this month.
The Pennsylvania Wall of Fallen Heroes, which lists the names of 228 Pennsylvanians killed since 2001, will be on display from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday at Fisher Veterans Park.

The memorial that will be on display is a portable version of the actual Wall of Fallen Heroes, which was initially constructed in 2003 and is located in Millersburg, Dauphin County.

Any donations collected during the wall’s visit to Lebanon will benefit the maintenance and upkeep of the permanent and moving versions of the Wall of Fallen Heroes.

Chris Keiser, chairman of Project Welcome Home, said he developed the idea to bring the wall to Lebanon after going to see it in March in Manheim.

“It’s nothing like the Vietnam moving wall, but it’s touching,” he said. “They did a good job on it.”

In addition to bringing the Wall of Fallen Heroes to Lebanon, Project Welcome Home is planning other events for 2009. Among them is a “Buy-a-Brick” campaign to raise funds for improvements to the Lebanon County Veterans Memorial, also at Fisher Veterans Park.

The bricks, selling for $50 each, comprise the walkway leading to the memorial and the deck that surrounds the memorial. Some are already engraved.

“The bricks that are already there are from when it was originally built, and we’re going to have one of our tombstone engravers come in from Gingrich Memorials and engrave them on-site,” Keiser said.
Project Welcome Home will also assist the 328th Brigade Support Battalion’s family-readiness group in planning and preparing welcome-home events and ceremonies for soldiers from the Pennsylvania National Guard now deployed in Iraq who are scheduled to return in September.

“One of the things we had thought of is to give them an escort,” Keiser said. “We’re assuming they would come off the turnpike and into Lebanon, ... so one of the things we thought about doing is having a police escort and something that resembles a parade.”

A member organization of the Lebanon Veterans Advisory Council, Project Welcome Home is a veterans-support group dedicated to the promotion of and participation in veterans-oriented events.

“We try to get the civilian population involved in helping out and just generally just promote patriotism and make sure everybody stays behind our armed forces,” said Keiser, whose son, Chris, is serving in Iraq with the 56th Stryker Brigade’s 328th Base Support Battalion.

For more information and photos of the wall, visit the Web site at http://www.myspace.com/walloffallenheroes