By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — After more than seven years, the Reno County Veteran's Memorial is nearing initial completion.
"We have got all the money we need for the granite panels to be finished and hung," said Kelly Danyluk with the memorial. "We're still continuing to fundraise for special projects that might include, maybe a military vehicle on each side of our memorial and possibly some upkeep in the future."
Originally, the hope was to have everything hung and have an event on Veteran's Day this year, but that wasn't able to happen.
"With timing in some jobs and some things, we were not able to get it completed," Danyluk said. "We're hoping that maybe the end of the year, if not, the first part of 2021 sometime early spring, we're hoping. Then, we'll definitely have a dedication at that time."
There will be space for more names to be added once the initial group has been put up.
"We will have space for about another 3500 names," Danyluk said. "We'll have names for people we missed. Hopefully, there's probably going to be a misstep in spelling or two, so we've got room to correct those and we've also got room for future veterans."
Over 15,000 names have been submitted thus far. Around 13,000 were submitted in time for the initial engraving.