As Americans, we always give back and support our troops. We also always honor and remember those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Corey MacRae, class of 2009, had the vision to remember our own that have fallen by creating a monument. It seems though, that instead of “gone but never forgotten”, we have abandoned our heroes.

For his senior Capstone, and Eagle Scout project, alum Corey MacRae created the memorial that can be seen in the cafeteria courtyard. Now all that remains are sunken fences, untrimmed trees, and the brown dirt, which seems to be all that’s left of what was once a great memorial. This is a memorial that should be recognized by the school, and every student within it. Hundreds of students and teachers pass it every single day, but we all are oblivious to its existence.

We need to fix this, and even after the renovation of the cafeteria courtyard, it seems that no one acknowledged the necessity to fix the memorial; no one had the decency to make it look respectable. The gesture to honor these heroes is an honorable one and we believe it is well deserved. The abandonment of this memorial is not doing these soldiers, our fellow Spartans, any justice or giving them the respect they deserve. It is actually embarrassing.

It reflects poorly on our part, Corey MacRae had the vision to create this memorial, but there was never a presence of mind from neither faculty, nor students, to carry on with this project.  We believe that this is a great project for anyone to participate in; maybe it could even be a location that could be worked on for our next beautification day. MacRae created this memorial “In honor of our classmates who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country”.

As a school, we must make the commitment to restore the work that MacRae left behind, and we must do it for the eight brave individuals that fought for us in the past and for those that will make the same sacrifice in the future. If we do not want to fix this memorial for our personal satisfaction, just do it for those that have left us. Spartans QM1 Craig Lincoln Weeks, LCPL Thomas Steven Tulenko Jr, LTC Kip Paul Taylor, LT Ronald Joseph Mobayed, LCPL Kip Anders Poremba, CPT Mark Norman Stubenhoffer, and GSM2 Jeff C. Trowbridge. We need to come together to show that these heroes may be gone, but they are most certainly not forgotten.