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GREENSBORO — There are six new brass plates on the Wall of Honor at War Memorial Auditorium, and at the very bottom, you’ll find his name: Kevin A. Lucas.

Everybody knew him as Adam.

He looked like actor Matt Damon, chiseled chin, brown eyes, hair cut close to his scalp. Adam was a Marine, and he was killed two years ago in Iraq, taken out by a sniper’s bullet while on patrol. He was only 20.

His parents, Kevin and Sandy Lucas, were inside the auditorium last week — Row A, seats 5 and 6 — when the six new names were dedicated before a concert by the Heritage of America Band from the U.S. Air Force.

They do much to remember their son’s sacrifice. They’ve planted a victory garden underneath their flag pole in the backyard, and they keep the two American flags that draped his casket on display in their den.

Meanwhile, Adam’s father wears his son on his chest. Kevin works in produce at Sam’s Club on Wendover and wears a blue vest adorned with two Marine pins Adam wore on his uniform. He also wears a round button with Adam’s picture on it. Kevin has that one pinned right over his heart.

Every day, he wonders what Adam, a 2004 graduate of Northwest High, would be like. His only son, his youngest child, was engaged to be married, and he wanted to be a federal agent, U.S. marshal or a protector of our president.

Today, Kevin holds those memories close by wearing his buttons, tending his victory garden and seeing his son’s name on a wall that honors the local men and women who have fallen for their country since World War II.

That, he says, can never be forgotten.

But we live in extraordinary times. Wall Street is shaken, Main Street is worried, and we’re being asked to consider a $50 million bond referendum to renovate War Memorial Auditorium.

It needs it. No doubt. It opened in 1959, and it’s become the busiest room in the coliseum’s four-building complex.

But you can see water damage on the ceiling, and you can hear stories from the coliseum staff about the failing bathrooms, the rotting stage and the disintegrated air-conditioning coils.

Still, $50 million is a bunch of bucks, and many of us are strapped. But if the bond fails, War Memorial has five years left in its booking life of bringing in 140 events a year. And that includes high school graduations.

So, it might have to shut down, this 2,400-seat room on West Lee that has 628 names in the lobby along one long wall. Names like Kevin A. Lucas.

Adam.

“They died defending freedom and liberty for everybody and other people around the world,” says Kevin, 50, a father of three who served four years in the U.S. Air Force. “It’s like that old saying, 'When we as a nation forget our defenders, then we ourselves should be forgotten.’

“So, we’ve got to keep it up because I’d hate to think what would happen when I’m gone. My son would be forgotten.”

Drive across town, toward N.C. A&T, and you’ll spot the old ball yard, the place where Jackie Robinson once played. Dedicated in 1926, War Memorial Stadium honors local fallen soldiers from World War I.

Like War Memorial Auditorium, it’s crumbling, too.

These are sacred places. They made Greensboro, made memories and made heroes out of local soldiers like Reuben E. Davis, William D. Hammer and Kevin A. Lucas.

Adam.

We can’t forget. His dad never will.

“The hardest thing to do,” Kevin said, “is to leave your child in a casket.”

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com