SHILLINGTON, Pa. \u2013 For months, 18-year-old Kyla Love has been working on a passion project.<\/p>\n
All inspired by someone close to her heart.<\/p>\n
“My pop-pop’s my best friend,” said Love.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After her grandfather, Richard Dietrich, was diagnosed with dementia, Love said there was one thing he never forgot.<\/p>\n
“When he couldn’t remember our names, he didn’t remember how to eat, he didn’t remember anything like that \u2014 he remembered that he was a veteran,” Love said.<\/p>\n
She said one of their favorite activities is driving together.<\/p>\n
That’s when she noticed the Hometown Hero banners in Exeter Township.<\/p>\n
“He loves looking at them. He likes to think that they’re him. They’re not, but we’ll let him believe that they are,” Love said.<\/p>\n
Now, she wants to bring those banners here to Shillington and Cumru Township, as a way to honor his service in the U.S. Army, and all our veterans and current service members.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t be standing here. I wouldn’t have the freedom to advocate for this reasoning or for anything else that I want to do if it wasn’t for the fact that these people fought and laid down their lives,” Love said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even though her original proposal to Shillington Borough failed, she’s not taking \u201cno\u201d for an answer.<\/p>\n
“I’m hoping to walk away with more certainty that I’m going to get those banners hung for him, for someone that’s so special to me,” Love said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, with help from state Rep. Dave Zimmerman and Shillington American Legion, Love\u2019s goal is to propose her plans in person at a Shillington Borough Council meeting.<\/p>\n
So one day, the banners her grandfather looks at will actually be of him.<\/p>\n
“None of that life that we all love so much would be here if it wasn’t for them,” Love said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHILLINGTON, Pa. \u2013 For months, 18-year-old Kyla Love has been working on a passion project. All inspired by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[60642,23509,98593,120842,120844,18215,128,130,129,120843,1114,2349],"class_list":["post-291367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-community-recognition","tag-dementia","tag-granddaughter","tag-hometown-hero-banners","tag-kyla-love","tag-military-service","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-richard-dietrich","tag-shillington","tag-veterans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}