Chapel Hill may build veterans memorial

War veterans could soon be getting more recognition after the Chapel Hill Town Council voted Monday night to proceed with plans for a town veterans memorial.

Former council member Jim Merritt petitioned the council in 2009 to build a memorial in honor of local veterans.

Butch Kisiah, director of Chapel Hill’s Parks and Recreation Department, said a committee of local veteran group representatives and residents is hoping to raise about $300,000 for the memorial.

The committee has proposed the brick plaza area of the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery as the location for the memorial.

The memorial is expected to include five pillars to represent the five branches of the U.S. Armed Forces.

“This is a really important piece of ground,” Kisiah said.

He said the committee is working to keep maintenance costs low, although it is too early to know what the exact costs will be.

He said the committee wants to make the memorial a reasonable size.

“It would fit within that cemetery,” he said. “It’s to be tasteful.”

Chapel Hill resident and World War II veteran Robert Patton strongly supported building a veterans memorial before he died on April 11.

Lee Heavlin, Patton’s friend of 20 years, said Patton started advocating for memorials after visiting a mass unmarked grave in Mauthausen, Austria.

In 2012, Patton received France’s Legion of Honor, the country’s highest distinction.

Heavlin said Patton’s regiment helped liberate prisoners in a concentration camp in Mauthausen.

“It was a concentration camp where you didn’t come home,” Heavlin said.

He said there are many descendants of the Mauthausen concentration camp survivors living in the Chapel Hill-Durham area.

Jim Stallings, a Carrboro resident and member of Veterans of Foreign Wars and The American Legion, said he supports the memorial plan.

Stallings served in the Korean War and said many people don’t know much about America’s role in the war, but he’d like that to change.

“I want to be remembered,” he said.

Contact the desk editor at city@dailytarheel.com.