Planners of events next year to mark the 150th anniversary of the Siege of Vicksburg are looking for more than just a few good men, women and children — about 500 of them, to be exact.

Volunteers are being sought to light about 20,000 luminaries at 27 state monuments in Vicksburg National Military Park July 3 as part of scheduled commemorations.

“We’ll need 500 volunteers — with lighters!” said Bess Averett, executive director of Friends of the Vicksburg National Military Park, a key organizer of sesquicentennial events, during an address to the Vicksburg Lions Club.

To pull it off, Averett said, the group needs to sell more than 200 memberships to finance candles that burn or LEDs. Efforts to stream it live on YouTube are under way.

“On each state’s marker, we’re going to put the casualties for that state and we’re going to have the luminaries illuminating that state,” Averett said.

Memorial Day weekend, “when you would typically do something like that,” Ave-rett said, was out because “so much is already on the books,” including free concerts on Saturday, May 25, by the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra and Sunday, May 26, by the Jackson State University Mass Choir.

“At the Friends group, we’ve decided what we really want to do is create another tourism event for Vicksburg,” Averett said. “The city does so much with their Fourth of July celebration, we certainly don’t want to conflict with that. We’d like to enhance it.”

The lighting also is planned at six state monuments in Vicksburg that are outside the park’s main site off Clay Street, park Superintendent Mike Madell said. Those state monuments are Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Connecticut, Maryland and Florida,

“The LEDs will be more expensive than the candles,” Madell said. “But, yeah, we need friends, families, kids… anybody we can find.”

A series of events wrapped around the sesquicentennial observance begins in late February, when about 900 fourth-graders from Vicksburg and Warren County public and private schools will visit the park and take on the roles of soldiers, down to their diets. Besides the concerts on Memorial Day weekend, a refurbished Iowa Monument will be formally rededicated, Madell said.

A restoration of the monument could start today or Friday and last about two months, Madell said.

“It’ll be a good cleaning, from top to bottom, starting with the masonry,” Madell said.

Other sesquicentennial events include a Heritage Fair April 5-7 in front of Pemberton’s Headquarters, on Crawford Street, and living history events May 19 and 22 to coincide with two failed assaults by Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

Installation has been completed, the park announced Wednesday, on 54 waysides, or panels, to interpret 54 important sites and topographical features to enhance visitors’ park experience. Many include a QR code, common on bulk packages, that brings up a video of retired park historian Terry Winschel giving an in-depth explanation when scanned by a smartphone with a scanner app.

Separately, a free app for iPhone and Android phones should launch by the end of March, Averett said. The GPS-enabled app features facts and video explanations from Winschel at park stops and sites important in the siege, including in Louisiana, Raymond and Port Gibson.

“What it does is it’ll put Terry Winschel in your pocket,” Averett said.