A ceremony will be held Saturday, September 13, in Lenoir City to rename a section of Interstate 75 in honor of the deceased son of a UT employee.
The section of highway between mile markers 81 and 83 will be named in honor of Lance Corporal William C. Koprince Jr., who died while serving in the US Marine Corps in Iraq.
His mother, Bernice Koprince, works in the UT Department of History.
The ceremony will be held at 10:00 a.m. Saturday at the Loudon County Visitors Bureau, 1075 Highway 321 North, in Lenoir City. It is free and open to the public.
Koprince was serving his third overseas deployment, and his second in Iraq, when he was killed by an improvised explosive device on December 27, 2006, in the city of Habbaniyah during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
His mother said she wanted the world to remember her son.
“It’s every parent’s fear that their child’s sacrifice will be forgotten,” Bernice Koprince said. “So I try to remind everyone that the price of our nation’s freedom often includes the lives of its service members.”
Their family moved from Michigan to Lenoir City twenty-three years ago. “We raised him in that section of Loudon County, so now his friends will see his name as they drive,” she said.
For more information on the ceremony, call 865-386-3674.