By JoANNE VIVIANO

By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- After Pearl Harbor, Roy Palumbo of Youngstown left high school to join the Army and fought the Japanese on Kiska Island in the Aleutians on the tip of Alaska.
Sam Beronja, also from Youngstown, fought with the Marines on Iwo Jima in the South Pacific during World War II.
Norman Shepherd fought the Germans at Monte Cassino in Italy in 1944.
Martin Walker served in Vietnam.
Steve Lewandowski was a Marine who served in Guam in the 1970s.
On the walls at YSU
Their names, and those of other veterans, are on plaques along the walls of Veteran's Plaza at Youngstown State University.
They were mentioned by Mike Shepherd, a YSU employee who helped plan Thursday's Service of Remembrance at the plaza.
"For the students in our audience today who may have gone to parades and, watching as veterans groups marched by, thought that veterans were all just old men: Sam was 19 when he fought on Iwo Jima; Roy was 17 when he joined the Army and 18 when fighting the Japanese.
"Norman was 23 when he was killed; Martin was 21 when he was killed; Steve was 20."
Shepherd, a Marine who served from 1972 to 1976, is Norman's nephew. Steve was his best friend in the service.
Shepherd also mentioned another veteran: His father, Malcolm Shepherd, from Austintown, served in the Marines during World War II.
Links to YSU
The other names have other links to YSU. Martin Walker is listed on Panel 13 West, Line 55 on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. His brother, Mike Walker, from Brookfield, is a former university employee.
Sam Beronja's two daughters work on campus, in the Maag Library and the department of engineering. Roy Palumbo's daughter-in-law works in University Development.
The service was designed to recognize veterans with links to the university.
Shepherd and other veterans read 55 names of YSU students and alumni who died while serving in the U.S. armed forces.
Among them are 51 students who died in World War II. An alumnus died in Korea.
One student was a Marine Corps prisoner of war in North Korea who is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Two others were members of the Reserve Officer Training Corps and died in Vietnam.
An important event
Although the crowd was sparse, Shepherd said he and other veterans would be there if no one else showed up because, "it's important to us as a group."
The names were read by Shepherd and Terry O'Connor-Brown, from the Women's Center, who served in the Army; Jerry Fullum, of the College of Engineering and Technology, who served in the Navy; and Leon Stennis, from the office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, who served in the Navy.
A playing of taps followed the reading of the names.
Willing to serve
Shepherd began his comments by referring to the community as "the home of people willing to protect our country.
"I recently found a headstone in a cemetery in Austintown that reads: In memory of Robert Gault, who died in the service of his country at Rocky River, Ohio, Oct. 29, 1814, aged 25 years."