This is How Soldiers Protect a Fence from Relentless Graffiti Vandals

A Vietnam veteran may have found a way to keep taggers and gangbangers from vandalizing the wood fence in the yard of his Chicago home near the Kennedy Expressway.

Dave Prawdzik painted a scene of a soldier kneeling in respect for a slain comrade.

And the tagging stopped.

Prawdzik told the story of his family’s years-long struggle with graffiti in his West Bucktown neighborhood to Mitch Dudek, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, who writes:

For years, Prawdzik would notify the city of graffiti on a regular basis and the city would send crews to pressure-wash the fence. But relentlessly, punctual vandals would strike again within days.

Gang symbols, but mostly the letters VTC, appeared on the fence. The initials stand for Vandalize the City — the handle of a group of taggers.

“It was like once a week, and then finally we were like: ‘Forget it. We’re not looking at it. Let it go,” said Prawdzik’s wife, Cynthia.

But they couldn’t just leave the graffiti there, outside the home where Prawdzik grew up and raised his own family. And finally, Prawdzik decided to try his own hand at street art. “I did it out of respect for the people who didn’t make it back, and for the ones who did who were looked down upon when we returned home,” Prawdzik told the Sun-Times.

And there’s more to this wonderful story.

» read more at SunTimes.com