John Frank Rozar, a graduate of Colorado Springs High School (now Palmer High School) who went on to join the Navy, was one of more than 2,400 American service members killed in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

Kenneth Lee Moore, a Colorado Springs native and 2^nd Lieutenant with the Army Air Forces, was killed in action in Germany on Sept. 9, 1944.

Pictures, news articles, and other information about Rozar, Moore and many other local World War II casualties will be on display at the Pikes Peak Library District’s East branch during the month of November.

The exhibit, titled “Lest We Forget: 1941-1945,” features dozens of images and brief biographies of El Paso County service members – some of them very young – who went off to war in the 1940s and did not return alive.

“This exhibit is a great example of a community preserving its history,” said Bill Thomas of American Legion Post 209, which commissioned the project.

In a way, the “Lest We Forget” exhibit is a project more than 80 years in the making. During World War II, Byron Akers, a WWI veteran and editor at The Gazette, meticulously documented every known WWII casualty from El Paso County.

When possible, Akers compiled as much biographical information about the service members as he could, including birth and death dates, education, newspaper clippings, and portraits.

“At some point after the war, he donated that collection to the Pikes Peak Library District,” said Thomas, a former archivist at PPLD.

Thomas, who is currently enrolled in the Graphic Design program at Pikes Peak State College, utilized some of the skills he learned to create framed panels highlighting individual stories. Each panel contains a portrait of the featured service member, a brief life history, and Gazette articles, mostly written by Akers.

“It’s kind of a mini-biography of each person,” Thomas said.

A walk through the exhibit is a kind of chronology of the war, through the lens of the El Paso County soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who gave the ultimate sacrifice in a war that claimed more than 400,000 American lives.

Among those featured are Navy Petty Officer Daniel T. Griffin, believed the first U.S. service member killed in World War II, Army Private First Class Floyd K. Lindstrom, a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor, and many others.

It seemed only appropriate, Thomas said, for Akers to be featured in one of the panels. The longtime Gazette editor died in 1992 and is buried at Evergreen Cemetery.

“It was his work that made it all possible,” he said. “He took it upon himself to document every casualty – every person who was wounded, captured or killed in action. And he made sure they were all mentioned in the paper.”

“Lest We Forget: 1941-1945” tells the story of how a community came together to honor its fallen members, Thomas said.

“All the guys who went to war created the history,” said Thomas, a retired Army Chief Warrant Officer. “The Gazette documented it and donated it to the library district, which preserved it. It’s not about me, or about American Legion Post 209. It’s about how a community has preserved an important part of its history.”