ROCHELLE —On Nov. 17, 23 bricks were engraved at the Rochelle Veterans War Memorial.

The procedure for engraving bricks is as follows: brick order forms are received, scanned and emailed to the engraver. The engraver returns a .pdf file of the brick order for verification. Then stencils are made by the engraver and brought to the memorial for engraving.

Lydia Roberts (treasurer of the Rochelle War Memorial Association) and Chuck Roberts (president of the Rochelle Veterans War Memorial Association) placed white named markers for the bricks to be engraved.

The engraver then secures the stencil to the brick, sand blasts the stencil, forming the letter and finally applies a black paint to highlight the lettering. Locations for new bricks to be engraved are distributed uniformly. Sometimes bricks are placed next to others at the direction of the person ordering the engraving, when practical.

After brick installation, updated brick location sheets are placed in the sign to the north of the memorial. Brick order forms can be obtained at the VFW or online at the City of Rochelle website under community-documents at https://www.cityofrochelle.net/community-documents/3219-rochelle-veterans-war-memorial-rev007/file.html.

All brick orders received before the fall deadline of Sept. 15 were engraved and the location sheets have been updated. Bricks are typically engraved in the spring and fall. There are currently 853 engraved bricks at the memorial.