As a way to remember and as a way to say thank you, a five-foot tall bronze statue of Greg "Pappy" Boyington, an ace World War II fighter pilot who received a Medal of Honor, will be erected this spring at Tacoma's Lincoln High School.

Boyington graduated from Lincoln High School in 1930.

"This man was a hero," said Connie Rickman, a former vice principal at Lincoln who has coordinated the memorial project. "He deserves recognition."

During the 1970s, Boyington became famous when a TV series Baa Baa Black Sheep about his WWII flying episodes ran for two years on NBC. When the war was over, Boyington received the Medal of Honor from President Harry Truman in October 1945.

For the past two years, Rickman has worked with a committee on building the memorial statue, working on fund raising and planning.

"We didn't want something inside," Rickman said. "That way people could only go see it when the building was open. So we decided on a statute outside of the building."

The bronze statue will be at the front entrance to the high school near the Abraham Lincoln memorial. In their discussions about the memorial, Rickman said they came to an important conclusion.

"We discussed what we were doing and we decided that the military aren't the only ones that keep us safe and secure," Rickman said. "We started talking about our 24/7 protectors. And they said the police and firemen always keep us safe as well. Right here at home."

The committee decided they wanted to include those two groups in the memorial. So, on the back of Boyington's bronze statue there will be three bricks from the 103-year-old Lincoln High School commemorating policemen and firemen.

That will include the name of Larry Frost, a policeman who was killed while responding to a quarrel in 1977. There will be two other Lincoln graduates honored by name: soldier Neil Turner and fireman Kurt Justed.    

Richard Snider, who is with Mountain View Funeral Home, is the sculptor who is overseeing the making of the bronze statue of Boyington and work is expected to start soon. Rickman, who was a vice principal at Lincoln from 1980 to 1990 and is now retired, is pleased to have been part of the project.   

"It's been a heck of a lot of work," Rickman said. "But the kids are really learning the fact that our freedom and our safety are not free. Somebody pays for it. Those people do and their families."

The memorial will be called the Perpetual Garden Memorial and it will have red, white and blue flowers planted around it.

Boyington was born in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in 1912 and grew up in Tacoma and died in 1988.