The city will host a special Memorial Day program at 1 p.m. Monday at Veterans Memorial Park in honor of those who have served both at home and abroad and in memory of those who have fallen in the line of duty.

The program is coordinated by Frank R. Vaise of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 1263 and will include an invocation by the local chaplain of the Fred Hancock American Legion Post No. 19, presentation of colors, and a rendition of the National Anthem.

A ceremonial wreath honoring the five branches of military service will be presented at the memorial. There will also be a ceremonial Honor Guard, playing of taps and singing of a patriotic song.

Parks department workers this week spent time preparing the memorial for the event, including the cleaning of the memorial’s marble face, which gets stained by the mortar used to hold them in place.

Since the park opened, maintaining the marble plaques has involved an inordinate amount of care by the city’s parks crews to keep them looking as clean and respectful as possible. The thin marble material used, along with the concrete grout backing, is impossible to keep pristine, leaving cracked and stained marble.

To deal with the issue, the city is in the process of hiring a contractor to install new thick black granite panels, which will replace all existing etched or blank marble plaques.

This new material and its attachment to the concrete walls will provide decades of minimally required maintenance, according to the city. All existing etched plaques will be replicated in the same format and location where they currently reside.

The work is scheduled to take place this fall.

Tiles in the memorial are still available. The granite tiles cost $75. There is space for three lines of engraved text, with up to 16 characters per line.

In addition to donated funds, the proceeds from the sale of plaques helped fund a portion of the park construction and will be used for continued maintenance.

Applications for the plaques to commemorate veterans are available to print from www.rentonwa.gov or by calling 425-430-6600.