Local Memorial Day services offered two concepts about memorializing: 1) extending it to include others and 2) recognizing it's never too late to memorialize.
Both ideas got attention at all three services held Monday.
During the second service, at the Korea-Vietnam Memorial, Greg Beck, chairman of the Texarkana Area Veterans Council and president of the local Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 278 referred to the nation's police officers as the country's "interior guards" who protect and defend free-born citizens against crime within the country's borders.
For the first time since the VVA started hosting its annual Memorial Day services in 1983, the chapter arranged for Bowie County Sheriff James Prince to read the names of local law enforcement officers who have lost their lives protecting and defending residents against crime. This new ceremonial procedure thus extended Memorial Day services to police officers locally for the first time.
Matthew Butler, pastor of First Bikers Church, is a military veteran who served in Iraq and in the war against terrorism. Butler related police officers' experience to military combat experience.
"When you think about it, police have to approach and venture into dark, unknown areas of dangers (like seemingly abandoned homes and vehicles). Does this sound familiar?" Butler asked the veterans at the memorial.
Wake Village Police Chief Ronny Sharp paid high tribute to veterans as guest speaker at the third memorial service at Hillcrest Memorial Park.
Starting his municipal law enforcement career with the Texarkana, Texas, Police Department in 1973, Sharp said he never had any military experience himself, but he did have the great honor and privilege through the years to serve with fellow police officers who, in their younger days, served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
"It's with great humility that I salute all military veterans and their family members," Sharp said. "I can't lose track of the fact that this country wouldn't be free without our great military veterans."
Longtime Military veteran Don Ruggles brought the idea that it's never too late to light during the second service when he read a Facebook letter written to him by longtime friend and local Vietnam veteran Wayland Lacy. In the letter, the thrice-wounded Lacy emotionally states he got to live the lives given up by men he knew to be only 19 or 20 years old when they died.
"I have lived what was taken from them-a life with family, with children and with grandchildren," Lacy wrote.
Ruggles went on to tell how he found out that Lacy, in recent times, met a local resident, Claudette Youngblood, whose husband died in Vietnam, but whose name wasn't inscribed on the local memorial. Within a matter of weeks, Beck, chapter members and TAVC members had her husband's name-Earnest LeRoy Garner-on the memorial.
"I want to thank you all for getting us together to make this happen," Youngblood said tearfully.
Keeping with the never-too-late theme, Dr. Dan Bookout, guest speaker at the first service held at Miller County Courthouse, spoke with fond recall of the efforts it took to get Marine Corps 2nd Lt. Waylon Bennett back home after he'd been missing in action for more then 50 years.
"We were able to do in eight years what the federal government could never get done," Bookout said. "Waylon Bennett died three years before I was born, but I hope all of you here today will learn more about heroes like Waylon Bennett."