Phoenixville HS Grad, Killed In WWII In Normandy, Eulogized By Local Student: Report

TREDYFFRIN, PA -- One Conestoga student is looking to give one fallen soldier the eulogy he always deserved but never received.

Amadea Smith, a junior, is working with her teacher Cynthia Hyatt to research and memorialize the Chester County man who was killed shortly after D-Day, according to a report.

The project is part of a national effort via the National History Day organization, which works around the country to help honor those who lost their life in combat but were never properly honored, the report states.

Smith and Hyatt have been researching Joe Vasko, who was born in 1925 and in 1942 graduated from Phoenixville High School, according to the Daily Local News.

The intensely academic research revealed Vasko enlisted in the Naval Reserves in 1943, landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day, but was killed just days later, on June 9, when a German torpedo boat sank his ship, the report states.

Vasko's brother survived the war, and his father was reportedly killed in an accident at Phoenixville Iron and Steel.

Smith and Hyatt will deliver a eulogy in Washington D.C.