The mother of fallen soldier David Veverka can’t believe the outpouring of love from the Jamestown community.

“It’s tremendous and overwhelming,” Carol Polley said Thursday. “We’ve received hundreds of cards. It helps to know people care.”

An effort to channel that goodwill will benefit future students of Jamestown High School, where Staff Sgt. Veverka graduated in 1999.

Polley said the David Veverka Memorial Fund is being established through First National Bank of Pennsylvania. It will offer a scholarship to a Jamestown High School student.

Donations may be made to the fund at any First National Bank of Pennsylvania office, she said.

Veverka, 25, of Jamestown died Saturday in Iraq while serving with the Maine National Guard.

He will be buried Wednesday in Arlington (Va.) National Cemetery, where he served for three years as a member of the elite Old Guard. The Old Guard stands watch over the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington.

Veverka was a senior wildlife ecology major at the University of Maine. On the university’s Web site, President Robert Kennedy says, “David was well-liked and highy regarded by his fellow students and by our faculty and staff, and his death has hit the UMaine community very hard.”

University spokesman Joe Carr said a moment of silence to remember students, faculty and staff who have died in the past year is a traditional part of commencement ceremonies, but Kennedy plans to mention Veverka during his remarks at the ceremonies on Saturday.