Local News in Brief : Fullerton : Memorial to War Dead Will Be Unveiled Today

A monument to the city’s fallen servicemen will be unveiled at 10 a.m. today in Hillcrest Park in a Pearl Harbor day ceremony featuring a Marine Corps band and a Veterans of Foreign Wars color guard.

Inscribed on the monument are the names of 110 Fullerton residents who lost their lives during World War I and II and in the wars in Korea and Vietnam, said Dotti Keegan, chairwoman of the memorial committee.

The $30,000 memorial, sponsored by Fullerton Elks Lodge No. 1993, was paid for through donations from the lodge, the City of Fullerton and residents, Keegan said.

It replaces an earlier monument that had deteriorated, Keegan said. Erected in 1944, it bore the names of Fullerton’s dead from both world wars, she said.

The new monument will carry the same inscription as the original: “To Forget Them Would Be Cruel to Their Spirit.”

Keegan said organizers had intended to unveil the monument on Veterans Day but fell behind schedule. Dec. 7, the 46th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was chosen as the next appropriate occasion to unveil it, she said.

Speakers at the public ceremony will be Brig. Gen. Lloyd D. Pool, assistant commander of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, and Fullerton Mayor Richard Ackerman. The 3rd Aircraft Wing’s Marine Band will play Taps, and the honor and color guard of the Anaheim Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 3173 will fire a five-gun salute.

The park is at Harbor Boulevard and Valley View Drive.