Vincent J. Pedalino returned to the marble memorial he helped create, at a ceremony this weekend honoring veterans such as himself.

Pedalino, who served as an Essex county police offer and is a WWII Veteran, drew much of the design used in a memorial honoring Merchant Marine efforts in WWII. The memorial sits outside Toms River town hall on Washington Street.

On Friday, Pedalino was among veterans who attended a Memorial Day wreath laying ceremony at the memorial he helped design.

Pedalino said the Ocean County Veterans Memorial Association asked him to design a Marine memorial, and it took him about a week to design it, laying out the picture of the battleship he drew for inclusion into the slab.

On the memorial is the picture of the battleship SS John Burke that Pedalino drew. Pedalino said the John Burke battleship was lost and sunk with no survivors after two kamikaze Japanese planes flew into the ship.

The memorial also recounts the number of Merchant Marines who died in the war and the number of ships sunk.