By Johnny Woodhouse

You may have noticed some royal blue street signs around the Beaches dedicated to the memory of local military personnel.

Known as the Fallen Wartime Veterans Street Sign Program, the project is a labor of love for Atlantic Beach resident Lenny Jevic, a historian with Beaches Veterans Memorial Park and a retired U.S. navy command master chief.

Jevic got the idea of honoring Beaches veterans who have died in war with a street sign listing their name, rank, branch of service, and highest military decorations after seeing the same program adopted in his hometown of Edison, N.J.

The street signs, created by Florida Transcor, a traffic safety supply company, are 30 inches in length and sit atop or below existing street signs. Many of the signs are sponsored by area businesses.  

Jevic, a former police sergeant in Atlantic Beach, first approached the City of Atlantic Beach with the proposal in 2019. After the City Commission approved the project in October 2020, street signs were installed to memorialize a quartet of World War II servicemen and one Vietnam veteran with ties to the city, including heroic Navy aviator Richard Bull, who died in the South Pacific in 1942.

In October 2020, Jevic brought the street sign program to the attention of the Jacksonville Beach City Council. It was unanimously approved in May 2021 and incorporated into the city’s Honoree Street Sign Ordinance.

The first round of memorial street signs went up in Jacksonville Beach soon afterwards, including two dedicated to the memory of brothers Stanley and Roger Harrell, a pair of U.S. Marines who died in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, respectively.

But Jevic didn’t stop there. Within weeks of Jacksonville Beach approving the street sign program, he pitched it to the City of Neptune Beach. A resolution was quickly passed authorizing the placement of signs at four locations around the city, including on the corner of Hopkins Street, the last home of record for Army Staff Sgt. Jody Pierce, a decorated paratrooper who lost his life in Vietnam.

A second round of signs may be going up in Jacksonville Beach later this year, including one for Marine Cpl. Marcus Preudhomme, a 2004 Fletcher High School grad who died in Iraq in 2008. Each colorful street sign in Jacksonville Beach includes a scannable QR code that can be read by a Smartphone and links to bios of each recipient. Bios are also located at jacksonvillebeach.org, under Parks & Recreation.