ZELIENOPLE — Jack K. Lusk was an outgoing, personable, dimpled young man in late 1943 when he joined the U.S. Army and headed to Texas for 17 weeks of training.

And it is that countenance that officials at the Margraten Cemetery in The Netherlands, where Lusk is buried, want to capture.

A foundation in The Netherlands is spearheading the project “The Faces of Margraten,” in which photographs of the 8,301 American World War II soldiers buried in the Margraten Cemetery are being sought for placement on their grave markers.

The foundation sent a letter to the Butler Eagle seeking a picture of Lusk to place on the white cross that marks his grave. As a native of Zelienople, Lusk is the only Butler County serviceman buried in Margraten.

The Eagle has submitted to the Faces of Margraten project the photograph of Lusk that appeared in the April 30, 1945, issue of the Eagle. That edition had a story that he had been killed in action.

According to his Eagle obituary, Lusk was sent overseas in July 1944. Having landed in France, Lusk served with Gen. Patton’s Third Army and was then transferred to the Ninth Army.

Lusk served in the infantry with the wiring and communications unit and his outfit was among the first to cross the Rhine River in France, his obituary states.

But an enemy bullet ended Lusk’s life near Essen, Germany, in April 1945.

His little sister, Ann Cooper, who is now 88 and living in South Carolina, recalled that government officials who were coming to notify families of a war death were always conspicuous because they arrived in a taxi.

“I’ll never forget. My mother started to scream when that taxi pulled up in front of the house in Zelienople,” Cooper said. “It was a shock to lose him. My mother never really got over it.”

She said Lusk took his role as big brother seriously, and the two were close growing up.

“I was his little sister, and he took good care of me and looked out for me a lot,” Cooper recalled. “He would be 90 next month.”

She recalled that Lusk, a 1943 graduate of the Zelienople High School, was very active in school. He played on both the football and basketball teams, and acted in the senior play.

“In his yearbook it says beside his name that he’s the senior class’ Bob Hope,” Cooper said. “He was very funny and energetic. Everyone who knew him would remember him.”

She said Lusk worked for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Zelienople before joining the Army.

Cooper said the Army told the family that Lusk was in a Jeep when he was shot on April 8, 1945, exactly one month before the war ended in Europe.

“We weren’t told much about it at the time,” Cooper said.

She said during his travels around Europe in the infantry, Lusk had befriended a Dutch family. After Lusk’s burial at Margraten’s American War Cemetery and Memorial, that family corresponded with Lusk’s parents and siblings and regularly placed flowers on his grave for several years.

Jeannie Lall, Lusk’s niece, has a foggy recollection of her uncle looking into her crib during a visit when she was less than 3 years old.

“It’s just a flash memory,” she said.

Lall, who lives in Florida and Delaware, keeps a photograph of Lusk as well as the Margraten Cemetery on display in her Delaware home.

Lall, her husband, Parsh, and their three young children traveled to Lusk’s grave in the mid-1980s, where the Dutch cemetery officials greeted them warmly.

“They were very gracious, welcomed us, and told us where his grave was,” Lall said.

She said gazing on the grave after years of hearing stories about her uncle had quite an impact on her.

“It was like ‘Wow, this really happened,’” Lall said. “‘This is really real.’”

The American War Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten is the only cemetery in the Netherlands that contains the remains of American soldiers. Many of the men and women buried there died during Operation Market Garden in September 1944 and during the Allied push into Nazi Germany.

In addition to the soldiers buried there, the names of another 1,722 American service personnel are inscribed on the Walls of the Missing at the cemetery.

The cemetery is in the town of Margraten, which is in the province of Limburg. Margraten was liberated by the 30th Infantry on Sept. 13, 1944. Two months later, the first American was buried at Margraten Cemetery.

John Cyprian, director of the county Veteran Services, is thrilled about the Faces of Margraten project and gives kudos to its organizers in The Netherlands.

“I think it is awesome,” Cyprian said of the project. “Anytime we can add faces to those who were killed in action or who served with honor, I strongly feel it makes a greater impact versus just reading a name.”

Information on the Faces of Margraten project is available at www.thefacesofmargraten.com.