Billboard depicting Marine Sgt.Frank World and son, Jacob
WEST SENECA, NY - Since he was killed in action by a road side bomb in Afghanistan on April 1, 2010, the young daughter who Marine Sgt. Frank World never even got to hold... has learned to walk.
His son Jacob, now 4, has taken a fancy to books and stories involving super heroes. He still asks his mother why his daddy isn't coming home.
"It's been rough," said Beth World, Sgt. World's widow. "It's hard to try and explain to him what happened but I just try to do the best I can...I just tell him that his daddy is an angel and he's always watching over him."
Their West Seneca home is full of reminders of her late husband, including the fallen comrades table she just got to setting as a year approaches without him.
But now, he'll be memorialized publicly through a program called Operation Never Forgotten.
A billboard will go on line Friday featuring two pictures of Sgt. World. One depicts him and his wife and the other shows him with his son.
Lamar Advertising is one of several firms across the country which participate in the program by donating unsold ad space on billboards for this purpose.
"I think it's a great honor," Beth World told WGRZ-TV. "On Friday it will be more of a way for the community to be able to memorialize him and I think it's great."
The billboard honoring Sgt. World will be the first one Operation Never Forgotten has placed in Western New York, and will be seen by motorists along I-190 in Niagara Falls, near the Fashion Outlets Mall.
The billboards are designed to be non-partisan.
They don't take a position on the war.
They just aim to remind us there's someone we hadn't ought to forget.
Click on the video player to watch our story from 2 On Your Side Reporter Dave McKinley and Photojournalist Norm Fisher.
Click here to read Dave McKinley's latest blog.
WGRZ-TV, wgrz.com
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