Video: Veterans' Memorial Updates Expected to Wrap Up Within the Month

It won't be long before North Canton's Veterans' Memorial is no longer a construction zone.

Jim Repace, who's overseen the memorial from the beginning, said the updates likely will wrap up within the next three weeks.

Repace met with North Canton Patch this week inside Bitzer Park to bring the community up to speed on the project. He tells about what will happen in the coming weeks in our accompanying video.

The story behind the memorial

Repace said the project was born when the Hoover Company shut down, and he wanted to see something done with the Hoover WWII veterans' memorial plaque that hung inside the building since 1947.

That's when he approached the Hoover building's owner, then TTI, about his concerns for the plaque. TTI then took the proper measures to place the plaque in his care.

"My plan was a plan following up on what the Hoover Company was going to do ... with the plaque — which they were going to mount it on a big block of granite and they were going to put it out at the Hoover Historical house on Easton."

Repace thought Bitzer Park would be a more fitting site and pursued that location instead.

"As the word got out that I had an idea here, Larry Hoover (great-grandson of H.W. "Boss" Hoover) got involved," he said. "He didn't like idea of putting this on a block of granite. He said, 'It came off a wall; I want to see it put back on a wall.'"

A committee formed after more members of the community caught wind of the project, and the memorial was eventually built in 2010.

"We've done a lot with it," Repace said. "With our other plaques from the other wars that surround the WWII plaque, I think it just really made a beautiful monument for the city of North Canton."