City blames spell check for Kettering veteran memorial error

A mistake in the text on Kettering’s Veterans Memorial at Delco Park has been fixed. Two granite slabs at the park improperly referred to the World War II D-Day invasion of Normandy, France as “Operation Overload,” when in fact the correct name was “Operation Overlord.”

The city of Kettering blamed the error on Spell Check, the computer program designed to correct spelling errors in text materials. “Overlord” was switched to “Overload” and no one caught it before the granite panels were created.

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A crew from Dodds Monuments was able to polish the text surface lightly and erase the last two letters of the word. The letters “rd” were added to complete the corrective action.

The error was discovered just before the memorial dedication late last year but the work required consistent warm and dry conditions.

With the cooperation of the weather, the crew finally was able to fix the mistake in just a few hours. The cost for the work was estimated to be at a few hundred dollars.

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