New Memorial at South Philly Cheesesteak Shop Honoring Fallen Heroes
By Paul Kurtz
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- In South Philadelphia today, a special event honoring nearly a century of fallen Philadelphia police officers and firefighters.
Geno Vento (at right in photo) paid several thousand dollars for the monument he's erected on the front of his famed cheesesteak shop.
"It's a bronze plaque, and it has the fallen officers from 1930 to the present -- firemen and police officers," he explains.
The plaque replaces more than 400 memorial bricks that made up the weatherbeaten "Path of Honor" at the shop.
"The weather was damaging the floor where we originally had the Path of Honor, and the water was coming through the ground up to the tiles and the plaques and stuff, and it was actually popping them off," he noted. "So it was not only a safety hazard, it was falling apart, basically."