Hockessin resident offers a mobile war memorial

Sixty-five years ago, 25-year-old Joe LaRosch’s olive drab Jeep was churning its wheels in the slippery sand of a Normandy beach alongside thousands of American troops storming Nazi fortifications.

Today, instead of enjoying a quiet retirement, it’s become an unlikely war memorial.

LaRosch, a Hockessin resident, has been carting the restored Jeep up and down the state, asking World War II veterans to sign it. He’s collected 80 signatures in the past year and a half.

But LaRosch never intended to be driving a mobile war memorial.

He purchased the World War II Jeep three years ago, calling the 60-horsepower vehicle his dream car.

“They’re great little play toys and I originally purchased it exactly for that, just to take it four-wheeling,” he said.

LaRosch, has nourished an interest in World War II since he was a child, when he asked a neighbor what he had done during the war.

“He told me, ‘I drove around in a Jeep and shot at Nazis,’” LaRosch said.

That was the only war story he ever heard from his neighbor, but it piqued his interest in World War II and led him to purchase the Jeep years later.

Once he finished restoring it, LaRosch decided to let World War II veterans drive the Jeep in the Hockessin Fourth of July Parade as a tribute.

Hockessin resident Carl Hauser was the first veteran to drive the restored Jeep in the parade, he said.

“When I showed it to him his eyes just lit up. He started to tear up a little bit,” he said. “It was the first time that he had seen one up close like that in about 60 years.”

After that, LaRosch decided the best tribute would be to take the Jeep to veterans and let them sign it.

He’s taken the Jeep to events at Fort DuPont, the White Clay Creek State Park and as far as Milford, as well as veterans’ homes around Hockessin and Kennett Square.

The Jeep has been signed by men and women, he said, and it is always a hit with the veterans.

“It brings back a time in their life that they don’t want to remember, but it’s something that they like to remember,” he said. “Every veteran I run into has a story about a Jeep.”

One veteran, Kurt Rosenbaum, told LaRosch about a time he was driving an identical Jeep, took a corner too fast and rolled the vehicle. Miraculously, he stayed in his seat and the Jeep landed back on its wheels, so he kept on driving, said LaRosch.

And even when veterans have bad memories about the war, he said they have nothing bad to say about the Jeep.

LaRosch intends to keep collecting signatures as long as he is financially able to keep the project going, he said, and he plans to eventually donate the Jeep to a museum.

It’s a fitting tribute to the veterans, he said, because, for many, the Jeep is an iconic symbol of World War II.

“They didn’t think that what they were doing at the time was important, but three generations later they are getting the recognition that they deserved then,” he said.