Tori Fater

tori.fater@courierpress.com

A veterans' memorial in downtown Evansville was spring cleaned just in time for Memorial Day, thanks to a 9-year-old volunteer from Posey County.

Kaylee Fraser of Saint Philip first decided the Soldiers in Stone paving stones needed some sprucing up early this spring, when she and her dad, Skyler Fraser, took a walk along the riverfront.

Soldiers in Stone is made up of dark square bricks engraved with the names of U.S. military veterans, both living and dead, and placed in the brick path around the Korean War Memorial on Riverside Drive.

“I saw those little stones and they were dusty, and I thought, ‘hm I should wipe those off’,” said Kaylee, a student at Marrs Elementary School in Mount Vernon. “It didn’t feel right for them not to be taken care of, because they sacrificed their lives for us.”

Since they didn’t have cleaning supplies handy at the time, the Frasers resolved to come back another day to work on Kaylee’s project.

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It was a few weeks before they returned, Skyler Fraser said, but he got done with work early one day this week and headed to the Korean War Memorial with Kaylee.

“We just took some glass cleaner and a bunch of rags and she went to town,” he said.

After the Frasers’ cleaning job, the stones were so polished they reflected the flags above them.

“It took her about two hours, but she cleaned every one of them,” Skyler said. “I was pretty proud of her.”

Kaylee’s had the soldiers on her mind since seeing the memorial earlier this spring, Skyler said, asking him several times when they would go back and clean up the stones.

“She’s a pretty special kid,” he said.

Skyler and Kaylee said they don’t have any friends or family members in the military that might have inspired her to polish up the memorial. Kaylee just wanted to do it “because it felt right,” she said.

“I don’t really know what got into me wanting to do that,” she said. “I just wanted to help out.”

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