A ceremony at the grave of Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Emile DeLeau Jr. will be held Sunday at Linwood Cemetery in Blaine. Photo Provided

BLAINE — A ceremony to honor Sgt. Emile DeLeau Jr., one of Belmont County’s Medal of Honor recipients, will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday at his resting place of Linwood Cemetery.

Shane Holstein of St. Clairsville — member of the St. Clairsville and Flushing American Legion and founder of the veterans organization Belmont County Fallen Heroes — said DeLeau was originally from Lansing and awarded his Medal of Honor in 1945.

Holstein said he got the idea to honor DeLeau while marking graves.

“I was sort of posting flags in cemeteries a couple years ago, and I’ve seen a lot of cemeteries without them, and then I found out a Medal of Honor recipient from Belmont County, his was down there in Blaine,” he said. “This Memorial Day we were changing the flags out, and I found out he still had relatives here.”

Holstein printed off information about DeLeau and will give it to the family Sunday along with a flag in a ceremony.

“I hope they’re pretty surprised at everything that’s coming together for him,” he said.

According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, in Oberhoffen, France, DeLeau led a squad in a night attack during “fierce house-to-house fighting.”

They cleaned one building of opposition and moved on another house, where enemies were firing machine guns. DeLeau exposed himself to fire, shooting his own submachine gun as he went, “advanced steadily toward the enemy position until close enough to hurl grenades through a window, killing three Germans and wrecking their gun.”

He then entered a house and captured 10 Germans.

On Feb. 2, DeLeau pressed forward with his unit, killed two snipers and approached another house where armed enemies were shooting. He ran across an open area to the rear of the building and destroyed a machine gun and killed two operators with a grenade. He was eventually killed by machine gun fire, but had cleared four well-defended houses and inflicted severe losses against the enemy, aiding his battalion to reach its objective with minimal casualties.

“A few years back, they put up a nice marker for him. It’s right behind his original headstone,” Holstein said.

A section of Interstate 70 in Belmont County at mile marker 220 and heading east to 223 has been named in DeLeau’s honor.

Holstein, who served in the Army during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm in Iraq in 1990-91, said respect is due to veterans from all eras. He added recognition is always important.

“I just kind of wished these guys were celebrated more and taught more about, in schools and stuff,” he said. “There’s a Sgt. Sylvester Antolak that was killed in Italy, from St. Clairsville, and I’ve graduated from St. Clairsville and I’ve never heard one word about him. These guys need to be celebrated and taught about.”

Antolak, another posthumous Medal of Honor recipient, also has a section of I-70 named in his memory, located about a mile east of St. Clairsville near the Ohio Valley Mall and Ohio Valley Plaza.