EPCHS Unveils Military Wall For Veterans Day

EVERGREEN PARK, IL — While Evergreen Park Community High School has had to cancel its annual Veterans Day breakfast due to the ongoing pandemic, students and faculty hope to make it up to local veterans by unveiling a new Military Wall honoring graduates who have served in the military.

The Military Wall of Honor is one of three new installation lining the main hallway of the high school replacing the former garish, 1950s institutional yellow that has been there since the school opened in 1956.

“That wall was always a pet peeve of mine,” said athletic director Jim Soldan, who coordinated the project. [Superintendent Tom O’Malley] asked me about giving the hallway a facelift and updating it so it would look like the rest of the building because we’re doing lots of renovations.”

Soldan, a former art teacher and wrestling coach turned athletic director, turned his focus on a bulletin board that held 30 photos of former students who had served in the military.

“I didn’t think the bulletin board was honoring our veterans well enough in my mind,” Soldan said. “The goal was to have the wall done by Veterans Day.”

Soldan put the word out on social media that the school was looking for pictures of veterans who had once attended Evergreen Park Community High School. The representative for the Class of 1967 — Pam Witzel — immediately responded by sending two dozen photos of classmates, many who served in Vietnam or during the Vietnam era.

About 150 photos inserted in Plexiglass sleeves are prominently displayed on the Military Wall.

“The wall can fit up to 280 photos,” Soldan said. “We have room to expand when we get there. We already anticipated that. We’d like to honor as many Evergreen Park alumni as possible.”

The current collection on the Military wall includes a Green Beret and a Navy SEAL, paratroopers and Air Force members flying planes.

“I emphasize when people send us pictures to let us know if they were in combat,” SoldaN said. “If ten years in they became a Navy SEAL or were in special forces, to send us that picture.”

The second installation features an “After Evergreen Park” magnetic photo mural featuring the crop of most recent graduates, the Class of 2020. The personalized photo magnets include students’ graduate photos and their post-graduate plans. After a year on display and hopefully inspiring current students, the magnets will be mailed to class members and the next graduating class will go up on the wall.

Finally, an ambitious mural highlighting historic photos from each and every EPCHS yearbook. The high school worked with Bannerville in Burr Ridge, a family-owned company that specializes in custom signage, innovative graphic design, quality production and efficient installation services across the United States.

Soldan and his team, including his assistant Michelle Herman, assistant athletic director Pat Flannigan and business education teacher Beth Spezia poured through boxes of yearbooks, black-and-white photos and digital photos.

“We ended up with 200 pictures,” Soldan said. “We have thousands of kids represented. A lot of kids are in group shots. We grabbed one from every yearbook.”

Bannerville came up with a vinyl wall wrap that was heat pressed on to the formerly blank yellow wall featuring photos from every decade of the school’s existence. The mural consists of 34 panels that had to be perfectly matched and lined up on the wall so it would appear seamless.

“This is the largest mural we’ve done to date,” company vice president Tom Sitkowski said. “From a design standpoint it was designing and collaging the photos, then taking that concept and installing it.”

Veterans or their families can email a jpeg of their military service member in uniform to Soldan at jsoldan@evergreenpark.org. Please include the year the veteran graduated and branch of service.