Image provided by The ChronicleELYRIA — Saturday afternoon marked an emotional day for several families in Lorain County.
More than a dozen people gathered at the Gold Star Families Memorial Monument in downtown Elyria to lay a wreath for the service members lost in conflicts around the world.
Led by Kimberly Hazelgrove, whose husband Brian died in action in Iraq in 2004, said some of those gathered were descendants of those killed long ago — in World War I or World War II. Others suffered more recent losses.
But no matter what, that emotion is still there.
“That’s the thing with grief,” she said. “It never quite goes away. And so the county has made a very physical promise that our families are no longer going to be ignored or forgotten.”
Hazelgrove, who was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, said veterans know the ones who never came home, the lives lost on the battlefield.
But it is the Gold Star families who are the legacy of those fallen service members.
“We are the blood of our service members,” she said. “We are raising our children to have honor and respect and to do good in this world and hopefully continue the good work that they did for the country.”
And that country must never forget the sacrifices made, she said.
Lorain County Veteran Service Commission Director Jacob Smith agreed.
“Every nation has to remember its heroes so that the future generations have something to aspire to,” he said. “And there has been a lot of questions in our lifetime of what course the United States was taking.”
He said ahead of the war in Iraq then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked if the country’s plans for Iraw ere an example of “empire building.”
Powell’s answered that the United States has sent many service members into great peril to fight for freedom beyond its borders, and the only land it ever asked for was enough to bury those who did not return, Smith said.
“Let future generations know that here in Lorain County we honor, to a high degree, the choice of military service and sacrifice,” Smith said.
AMVETS Post 32 Honor Guard member and Marine Corps veteran Dan Clement acknowledged those who served in World War II and the lives lost at the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Clement read President Ronald Regan’s 1986 proclamation for National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
“In the annals of American history, only a few events are so well known and so deeply rooted in national remembrances that the mere mention of their date suffices to describe them,” he read. “Of these occurrences, none can have had more significance for our nation than Dec. 7, 1941.
He continued, “… Such destruction seared the memory of a generation and galvanized the will of the American people in a fight to maintain our right to freedom without fear … Their sacrifice was for a cause, not for conquest; for a world that would be safe for future generations. Their devotion must never be forgotten.”
Wreaths were provided for servicemen killed in military conflicts and laid to rest outside Lorain County by the local Honor Wreaths organization.
