Roads bill to honor local deceased

STAFF REPORT

COLUMBUS — Valley roads and a bridge would be named to honor fallen soldiers, an electrician killed while on the job and a Youngstown native known as “America’s Schoolmaster,” under separate bills introduced to Statehouse committees Tuesday.

Sen. Capri Cafaro of Liberty, D-32nd, and Sen. John Boccieri of New Middletown, D-33rd, offered sponsor testimony on the four bills to the state Senate’s Highways and Transportation Committee.

One would designate the intersection of U.S. Route 422 and state Route 82 as the Sgt. Marco Miller Memorial Interchange, in memory of the Warren native who re-enlisted in the National Guard following the events of Sept. 11, 2001. He died after being injured near Taji, Iraq, in December 2006.

Another bill would designate the intersection of state Routes 45 and 82 in Champion Township as the Sgt. Robert M. Carr Memorial Interchange. Carr enlisted in the Army after Sept. 11, 2001, while he was still a junior at Champion High School. He was killed after the vehicle he was driving rolled over an explosive device near Baghdad in March 2007, Cafaro said.

A bill would designate a section of Interstate 680 in Mahoning County as the William Holmes McGuffey Memorial Highway, after the “educator, lecturer and author” whose work “became the standardized text for school children in the 19th Century,” Boccieri said.

Another would designate the Lake Milton Bridge in Mahoning County the Peter J. DeLucia Memorial Bridge. DeLucia, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, “suffered a deadly electric shock” while setting up concrete barriers on Interstate 76 near the bridge, Boccieri said.