{"id":203524,"date":"2025-09-05T23:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T23:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/203524\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T23:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T23:30:11","slug":"jacksonville-veteran-volunteers-work-to-honor-more-than-80000-soldiers-missing-in-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/203524\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville veteran volunteers work to honor more than 80,000 soldiers missing in action"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of veterans is restoring an old plane to be a centerpiece on display at the Cecil Airport POW\/MIA Memorial.<\/p>\n

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 A tribute to those who were never found.<\/p>\n

A group of Jacksonville veterans are working on a way to remember soldiers who were prisoners of war or are missing in action.<\/p>\n

“Not a lot of people get to relive their past, so to go in a plane you haven’t been in in almost 30 years, it’s like stepping back in your hey day,” said Navy veteran Jarvis Klees.<\/p>\n

Klees says the S3 Viking still smells the same as when he flew on it back in his Navy days in the 90s.<\/p>\n

The plane was a fixture at Cecil Field from the 1970s through the late 90s when the base was decommissioned.<\/p>\n

But now, it’s back, and will soon be a part of Legacy Plaza – an ode to the planes that flew out of Cecil Field in its hey day.<\/p>\n

“It’s the best therapy somebody could ever have to do something like this,” Klees said.<\/p>\n

Klees’s “therapy” is part of a much bigger picture – a 26 acre, $80 million Prisoner of War and Missing in Action Memorial.<\/a><\/p>\n

Congressman Aaron Bean sponsored a bill<\/a> to designate it as the\u00a0<\/strong>national memorial – displaying the names of the more than 80,000 MIA American soldiers since the start of World War II.<\/p>\n

“Solace to the families to come here and see their loved one, their relative, their friend on a wall that says, ‘Hey, we still remember and will never forget those missing in action,'” said National POW\/MIA Memorial Executive Director Captain Ed Turner. “We think this is long overdue.”<\/p>\n

Renderings show the wall with all the names, exhibits showing the work to find MIA soldiers and even a possible reflection pond complete with a quarter of an aircraft carrier for guests to walk out on.<\/p>\n

For Turner, it’s a personal mission.<\/p>\n

“I lost a good friend coming back from a strike in Iraq during Desert Storm,” Turner said. “He’s still missing. That’s a driving force for a lot of folks who are a part of this project.”<\/p>\n

Turner says it’ll likely be about seven years, if not more, before the full memorial is complete.<\/p>\n

First thing’s first – Klees and company need to get the S3 Viking back into fighting shape. “There’s some guesswork, and it’s a jigsaw puzzle, but it’s a great little jigsaw puzzle to play with,” he said.<\/p>\n

Volunteers have a few weeks or work ahead of them while it’s still in the hangar, but eventually it will move to the memorial by the old chapel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of veterans is restoring an old plane to be a centerpiece on display at the Cecil…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":203525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,3188,723,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-203524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115154296746977164","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}