MILITARY TRIBUTE
high school at the time, and she assumed his tan was from
spending time at the beach.
“I told her no, and told her about Run for the Wall,” he
said. “And I told her that Memorial Day weekend we go to
the wall, and she said, ‘Isn’t that in New Jersey?’ I said, ‘No,
it’s not.’ I wondered how many kids, how many families
don’t really know? How many don’t know about POW/
MIA, what that means? I thought, well, why don’t we bring
the wall to Murrysville and invite the schools to come? And
bring the students. Invite the community.”
Lawrence brought the idea to Carly Greene, recreation di-rector
at the Murrysville Recreation Department, who served
in the Marines and whose father fought during two tours in
Vietnam.
The initial plan was to fundraise in 2018 — it costs upward
of $8,000 to book the wall — and then have it in Murrysville
in 2019.
However, after Lawrence learned that students from Frank-lin
Regional would be studying the Vietnam War at the start
of the 2018-19 school year, he asked Greene if there was any
chance of getting it sooner.
“I consider it an answered prayer, but the word got out,
and in about three days, it was taken care of through private
donors,” he said. “They said bring the wall in.”
Lawrence, Greene and Amy Wengrzyn, also of Murrysville
Recreation Department, have now spent the past few months
24 | Destination Westmoreland 2018
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