NEW BOSTON, Texas-A Garden of Hope Memorial dedicated to American military servicemen and women held as prisoners of war got a rededication Friday.
Memorial Day services
Three local military veterans organizations and a funeral home will hold four separate Memorial Day services Sunday and Monday in Texarkana. Of the four services, two will be held on the Texas side and two on the Arkansas side. The first service, hosted by the Texarkana Area Veterans Council, will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at East Memorial Gardens on U.S. Highway 67 north just past the Texarkana Regional Airport. The next three services will all be held on Memorial Day. The next one starts at 11 a.m. Monday at the Miller County Courthouse and will be hosted by the local American Legion. Following the courthouse service, there will be a Memorial Day Walk from the courthouse to the Korea-Vietnam Memorial, hosted by the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 278, which starts about 11:45 a.m. The fourth and final service, hosted by Texarkana Funeral Home, will take place at 1 p.m. at Hillcrest Memorial Gardens on U.S. Highway 67 West. For more information, call 870-773-8279.However, the rededication featured a more durable stone memorial, replacing the initial metal sign memorial.
The ceremony also included the raising of U.S. and POW-MIA memorial flags at the garden's site.
Former Bowie County Precinct 4 Commissioner Carl Teel dedicated the initial POW Garden of Hope Memorial in 1999 to the memory of his father, James Teel, an Army artillery serviceman taken prisoner by the Japanese army following the May 6, 1942, surrender of Corregidor Island.
"Starting at age 62, Dad began having flashbacks about his experience in the camp," Carl Teel said of his father, who died in 1991 at 72. "Dad began to think that he was going to be put back in the prison camp. He had these flashbacks for about three months."
The current Bowie County Precinct 4 Commissioner, Mike Carter, himself a Vietnam War veteran (and his father a Pearl Harbor survivor), decided to rededicate the memorial with a more permanent marker.
"This memorial is for the memory for all the men and women who gave it all up for us," Carter said before introducing Teel to an audience of county officials and local and area military veterans gathered for the occasion.
"When I asked Dad how he was able to survive during that time in the camp, he told me that it was the hope he had that one day, American soldiers would come back and liberate all of them," Teel said. "That was the reason we name this memorial the Garden of Hope. They were beaten physically, practically every day, but the greatest words he ever heard came the day they were all rescued. Those words were, 'We're Americans. Run to the gates.' That's when Dad struggled to his feet and ran.
"Dad also remembers that whenever the men faced discouragement in the camp, they would whisper in each others ears, 'Look beyond the barbed wire and see the daisies.' We all thank God we had all those men making sure we stayed free, and we thank God they were willing to pay the ultimate price to keep us free."