Thousands Memorialize Troops’ Sacrifices The Nation’s Unborn Also Remembered As Region Commemorates Memorial Day

Tue., May 28, 1996

By Adam Lynn adaml@spokesman.com

Never forget.

That message echoed through the graveyards of the Inland Northwest on Monday as thousands of residents gathered to eulogize the nation’s war dead - and, in one case, the country’s unborn - on Memorial Day.

From Spokane’s flag-draped Fairmount Memorial Park to flower-blanketed Coeur d’Alene Memorial Funeral Home and Cemetery, speakers implored residents to remember the sacrifice made by those Americans who died in battle.

People such as U.S. Army Sgt. Kenneth A. Schimanski, buried at Fairmount in September 1969 after dying in Vietnam at age 19.

And Bronson Jerome Mastne, a 19-year-old infantryman buried at Fairmount after being killed in Korea in 1952.

And Paul Laurence, who served in the Army’s 20th Engineers in World War I and was buried in Spokane in 1967 when he died at 73.

“Their memories will fill our land like a benediction,” Dave Hamm, commandant of Spokane’s Marine Corps League, said at Fairmount.

“We must honor our sacred heritage, purchased with their valor and sealed with their blood.”

U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Spokane, agreed.

“We need to make them appreciate all that those in uniform have given to this great country,” he said before laying a wreath at the Iwo Jima Memorial at Fairmount. “May we ever keep it sacrosanct.”

At Spokane’s Holy Cross Cemetery, nearly 200 people gathered to see the Memorial to Unborn Children unveiled in a brief service led by the Rev. William Skylstad, bishop of the Spokane Catholic Diocese. The bronze statue created by Vincent De Felice depicts three cherubs escorting a sleeping infant toward heaven.

A plaque quotes a verse from the Bible’s book of Matthew: “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

Skylstad said that on Memorial Day, it is important to “honor those who have gone before us,” including “those who have died before birth.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: Changed from the Idaho edition

Changed from the Idaho edition

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