Export Historical Society adds a few more names to borough war memorial

A few more veterans will be honored in Export this Memorial Day, as historical society officials add to the town’s war memorial.

“We definitely had Memorial Day in mind as a deadline,” said historical society board member John Lukacs. “We decided to open things up for new name suggestions, and we ended up with about 20 additional veterans.”

The memorial was set into the wall of the Export American Legion for nearly three decades, “and no one paid much attention to it,” Lukacs said.

After relocating the memorial to a spot near the West­moreland Heritage Trail, Lukacs said, borough and society officials began hearing from area residents with a brother or a father who was a local veteran.

“We had an entire blank side of the monument, because of where it was up against the building all those years,” Lukacs said. “And we were also fortunate to have a few other donors including FirstEnergy, S&T Bank and other local businesses who stepped up and made some important contributions.”

The final engraving and lith­ography work was done by a father-son team from Kittanning, Willy and Levi Sherry, who were contracted by Mc­Colly Memorials of Greensburg.

“We lettered the whole thing, added the bird, eagle and donor messages, and the new veterans’ names,” said Lisa Kessler of McColly Memorials.

Kessler said the company does not typically encounter a memorial like Export’s.

“For the most part, when you purchase a big stone like that, the front and back are always both polished,” she said. “But this one was up against a wall all those years, and that made it a little bit of a different job.”

The memorial is now officially named for Frank Kapusta, the first borough resident killed in World War II, and for Gary Wuslich, a former Export resident and longtime friend of Lukacs’ family whose $10,000 donation got the project off the ground initially.

“Gary and my dad go back quite a way, and I’ve known him for years,” Lukacs said. “We thought we were finished when we moved it. Now it looks like we’re pretty much officially done, and it ended up working out just in time for Memorial Day.”