Post Office to be Renamed After Fallen Marine
SEEKONK, Mass. (AP) - The effort to name the post office in Seekonk in honor of a local Marine who died in Iraq is one step closer to reality. Congressman James McGovern says the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill to name the facility after Lance Corporal Eric Valdepenas. The bill now goes to the Senate.
The 21-year-old Valdepenas was killed in September 2006 when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle in Al Anbar province. Valdepenas served in the Marine Reserve’s 1st Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, based in Ayer.
He was a graduate of Bishop Hendricken High School in Warwick, Rhode Island, where he was an honors student and captain of the lacrosse team, and an engineering student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.