Asked her favorite project of the school, only one came to mind for Alexa Scheirer.

"Selling wristbands with the Operation Never Forget Club to raise money for the War at Home Memorial in honor of Michael Wargo," the Lehighton Area Middle School student said with pride.Operation Never Forget, led by teacher and historian Ron Rabenold and made up of Lehighton fifth grade students, recently donated $918.54 to Michael's parents. The money, raised through sales of red, white and blue wristbands, will help offset the cost of the memorial and transportation to get it to Lehighton.The statue is a silhouette of Wargo, a 1994 graduate of Lehighton Area High School and Army veteran who spent 10 months in Iraq as a chemical weapons specialist. Wargo returned home in 2005, but suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for eight years until taking his own life."I just couldn't believe it when I heard the amount these kids raised," Michael Wargo Sr. said Thursday. "I was thinking maybe a couple hundred dollars, but over $900 is incredible. When they pass that statue, I hope they take pride in the fact they helped create it and bring it here. If it helps one veteran get the help they need, the students played a part in saving a life."Following a stint in Harrisburg, the statue will be unveiled locally at a memorial ceremony at Lehighton Veterans Memorial Park."This started as maybe a $600 project, but then we changed from metal to a granite plaque," Sally, Wargo's mother, said. "It has been sand blasted and painted. With the transportation back and forth to Harrisburg, it got up over $6,000. Operation Never Forget made a huge contribution and we're so grateful."The fundraising efforts were especially meaningful, Sally said, because they came from middle school students.Wargo's daughter, now 10, is a middle school student in Delaware."To know children her age came up with this and did this for Michael warms our hearts," she said.Operation Never Forget is in its third year as a middle school club. Rabenold said the idea was for students to engage in the community and to help them understand the sacrifice of public and military service."We noticed that each year, part of the Lehighton Memorial Day service urged people to lay flowers on graves, but very few people were remembering to bring their own," he said. "We thought it would be a nice gesture to remind our community about the origins of this day. Starting the club was also symbolic. We wanted to help instill a sense of community in our students by showing them how we all need to make small personal sacrifices for the greater good of our community."The club raised $400 for flowers to be placed on veterans graves this Memorial Day.The middle school held a special Memorial Day service on May 26 honoring Wargo's service.From the start, the club starting laying money aside for a larger, yet to be known, permanent effort to help."When I read the Michael Wargo story to my students, and how his parents were trying to raise money for not just his memorial, but as an outreach to help other soldiers who might be dealing with this hidden "war," the students realized we had a worthwhile project to help," Rabenold said.The Valor Clinic in Jonas nominated Wargo as part of the Mission 22 memorial project "The War at Home," a way to honor the sacrifices of service members and remind citizens of the strife of mental illnesses that lead to the suicides of 22 veterans every day."If this saves one veteran from this tragedy, it will have been worth it," Sally said.