He wants you to know that LaMarre attended Fairfax High School, where he was president of the Agriculture Club and played outfield for the school baseball team; that in civilian life he was a truck driver; that, five months before he enlisted, he married Ethel Rose Fox at the Methodist Church in Rockbridge, Va.; that he had blue eyes.

Milne, 61, is the creator of Stories Behind the Stars, an effort to research every last U.S. soldier, sailor, airman and Marine who died in World War II and write a brief essay about each that can be pulled up on a smartphone app.

It’s a gargantuan task. More than 421,000 Americans died in the conflict, and Milne wants to gather all their stories by Sept. 2, 2025, the 80th anniversary of the war’s end. He’s broken it into manageable chunks, relying on volunteers around the world to scour genealogical sites to gather information and craft the text.

“I have about 400 volunteers regularly contributing stories,” said Milne, who retired as the financial literacy manager at a bank and lives in Louisville. “In order to reach our target we’re going to need between 2,000 and 3,000 people doing one story a week.”

Milne hopes to find more people willing to “give up one night of Netflix and instead of watching ‘Tiger King’ do a story about somebody who gave their life for our country.”

Kathy Harmon of Saint…