Memorial Honors Vietnam War Hero At South Jersey High School

VOORHEES, NJ — A South Jersey man who was killed in the Vietnam War has been immortalized with a memorial at his high school.

A memorial honoring Jay Lauer has been erected at Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees. The memorial stone was set on Friday, July 13, according to the Jay Lauer Memorial Facebook page. Construction on the full memorial was completed the following week.

“The group would like to thank everyone who generously donated funds to help make the project happen,” the group said in a post announcing the setting of the stone.

John Masso and Jack Gangluff envisioned the memorial for their classmate, the only graduate of Eastern Regional High School to die in combat. They all graduated from the school in 1967, two years after it opened.

A GoFundMe account that was launched to help pay for the memorial raised $14,635 for construction of the memorial. After graduation, Lauer enlisted in the Marines and volunteered to go to Vietnam, according to the fundraising page. He was killed in mortar fire May 8, 1968, 23 days after he arrived in Vietnam. The memorial is located at the flagpole at the main entrance to the building.

A formal dedication is tentatively set for Veterans Day, on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018, according to the Courier Post. Masso told the newspaper the completion of the memorial is “like a dream come true.”

The attached image of Jay Lauer was posted on the Joseph E. Lauer Memorial GoFundMe page.