Korean Consulate General officials pay tribute to Shelby Township veterans

On May 3 at the Shelby Township Veterans Memorial, delegates from South Korea paid their respects to Shelby Township residents who died during the Korean War.

Dr. John Shim and Eun Yi Jeong from the Korean Consulate General in Chicago took part in a Shelby TV broadcast and joined Township Veterans Events Coordinator Phil Randazzo and Township Clerk Stanley Grot at the memorial.

“It is our great honor to thank you. You are paying your respects to our fallen heroes,” Grot said.

After the broadcast, Dr. John Shim and Eun Yi Jeong silently paid their respects to Benjamin C. DeForest, John R. DeForest, Vern A. Morgan and Richard C. Zawlocki -- township residents who died fighting in Korea.

“I would like to express my most sincere thanks to Dr. John Shim and Ms. Eun Yi Jeong for taking time to stop by our Veterans Memorial and honor our brave military residents,” Township Supervisor Richard Stathakis said. “And this visit shows why the work Mr. Randazzo does with our memorial is so important.

“Not only does the memorial provide the Township with a first-class site to receive dignitaries, but, more importantly, it provides our fallen military heroes with a dignified and solemn home where all of us who owe them our freedom can honor them.”

A memorial to Shelby Township’s latest generation of fallen military heroes will expand on the scope of the site as it is unveiled during the 2013 Memorial Day ceremony May 19 at the Veterans Memorial.

The Township’s  new Global War on Terror memorial brings together residents who fell while fighting terror in Iraq and Afghanistan and will be placed at the site of a memorial bench honoring Alex Knapp at the Shelby Township Veterans Memorial, and the bench will be placed in Macomb Township, where Knapp was a resident at the time of his passing.

The names of Shelby Township soldiers who fell in Iraq — Mark Barbret, Tarryl Hill and Christopher Kube — will be removed from their current location on the Veterans Memorial and join the names of U.S. Army soldiers Kyle B. McClain and Todd Lambka, who were killed in action last year in Afghanistan, on a new 5-foot granite replica of Macomb County’s Heart of America Memorial, which will also feature Alex Knapp, who died of a cardiac event in 2010 following his return from Iraq, where he lost both legs in an improvised explosive device blast in 2008.

“Just because they’re falling in different countries doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be together in our hearts and memories,” Randazzo said, regarding the need for the new memorial. “They’re fighting a common enemy in one war -- the Global War on Terror. We had troops fall in France and the Philippine Islands in World War II, and we remember them together. And these heroes are no different.”