It’s proper and fitting that Seneca Valley School District should consider renaming its middle school after fallen Army Sgt. 1st Class Ryan Gloyer.

All of us owe Gloyer and his family a debt of gratitude. The Zelienople native and 2000 Seneca Valley graduate was killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2016.

Traditionally speaking, Seneca Valley has a solid foundation of honor for military veterans. For 18 years the district has observed a veterans night football game, as it did in September. Fifty local service veterans were recognized as guests of honor for that game, at which special recognition was given for Gloyer.

Members of his alma mater and his community have been looking for other appropriate ways to honor the memory of Gloyer, a Green Beret.

This past week, a committee of Seneca Valley High School students and alumni proposed to the school board putting Gloyer’s name on the middle school.

The committee — high school seniors Ryan Berglund, Jess Pollaci and Jenna Pollaci and graduate Nate Konieczka — were joined by Richard Gloyer, Ryan’s father; Mary Beth Keally, a high school classmate; and one of Ryan’s fellow soldiers. They all spoke about Gloyer’s personality and his impact on others.

“In essence, this student-driven initiative presents the opportunity for Ryan’s legacy to raise up these middle school students to be more than what they ever thought they could be,” Richard Gloyer said. “Let Ryan’s legacy raise them up.”

An additional circumstance about Ryan Gloyer would make the honor even more appropriate — he was a teacher as well as an elite soldier. Following his father’s advice, Gloyer delayed his plan to enlist in the Army to attend Thiel College in Greenville, where he graduated magna cum laude in 2004 with degrees in psychology and elementary education. In those years, Richard Gloyer said, he saw his son blossoming as an educator and scholar who reveled in time spent as a student teacher at Greenville Elementary School, where he taught a class of 4th graders.

But one thing had remained unchanged through Ryan’s years at Thiel: he still aspired to be among the military’s elite soldiers. So at dinner on the night of his graduation Ryan made an announcement: no more waiting, he had enlisted in the U.S. Army through a deferment program that would allow him to finish earning his teaching certificate.

Gloyer said his son’s decision to enlist came as another “shocking moment,” to him, but as time passed and Ryan — who officially enlisted on Dec. 28, 2004 — graduated from boot camp, jump school and then Ranger school, he saw why his son’s sights had been set on military service.

“I could see he was happy doing what he wanted to do, and I just embraced it,” Gloyer said.

In September of 2014 Ryan Gloyer, now a decorated combat veteran who had served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, in 2007 and 2009, as part of the 82nd Airborne, graduated from Army Special Forces Q-Course and became a Green Beret. His numerous awards include a Bronze Star with Valor, a second Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, two Meritorious Service Medals and two Army Commendation Medals, according to the Army.

Gloyer called Ryan’s graduation a moment of “immense pride” made that much sweeter for father and son because of the adversity Ryan had endured along the way. It took Ryan three tries to pass Q-Course, which is legendary for its punishing mental and physical training regimes. At one point the young Gloyer had to be pulled from the program by Army brass after he suffered an injury but refused to quit.

If there’s a more fitting name to place on a local school building, we can’t think of it.