Island Lake VFW post to be renamed for Special Forces commando who grew up in Arlington Heights
An Army Special Forces commando who grew up in Arlington Heights and was killed by mortar fire in 2004 will be honored today in Wauconda.
A ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. in Memorial Park, 309 S. Main St., for Major Paul R. Syverson III, who served in the opening days of the war in Afghanistan and saw the defeat of the Taliban.
Syverson's family and members of the Special Forces will be on hand as Island Lake Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2486 is being renamed in his honor.
The name change is being done with the consolidation of Post 2486 with Lake Zurich VFW Post 11020, according to Mike Peck, past commander and former superintendent of the Veterans Assistance Commission of Lake County.
"The membership was strong; that's why we wanted to keep the post alive," Peck said.
The Lake Zurich VFW charter has been closed. Post 2486 does not have an official headquarters, and the two organizations have been meeting at Wauconda American Legion Post 911, 515 S. Main St., just south of Community Park.
Peck hopes renaming the post in Syverson's honor will help attract younger, more active members.
Syverson grew up in Arlington Heights and attended John Hersey High School, where he was a member of the 1987 state champion football team. He attended Virginia Military Institute.
When CIA agent Johnny "Mike" Spann was killed in an Afghanistan prison uprising, Syverson was one of the Special Forces commandos sent in to retrieve his body and curtail the intense fighting, according to his obituary.
He was one of five soldiers injured in the November 2001 uprising by a misguided U.S. bomb, and he received a Purple Heart.
Syverson, who served with 5th Special Forces Group, was transferred to Iraq. He was killed by mortar fire June 16, 2004, at a U.S. base north of Baghdad where he stopped to buy equipment for fellow soldiers from the 5th Special Forces Group based at Fort Campbell, according to the obituary. He was 32.
Today's ceremony will be unique in the it will be held next to the Heroes of Freedom Memorial near Route 176 and Main Street, which was dedicated in 2015, Peck said.
It features a wall listing the names of the people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a beam from one of the fallen World Trade Center buildings.