Veterans brighten Memorial Day
Jim Shepperd sees a lot of familiar names on the gravestones at Coeur d’Alene’s Forest Cemetery.
“She was a real nice lady,” Shepperd said, walking past the grave where a woman named Emily Fogelsong is buried.
“Killer Heyn,” he said, pointing to the grave of Loren Heyn. “He was a killer with the girls. He graduated with my brother from high school in 1941.”
With his cane tucked under his arm, and a fistful of American flags, Shepperd worked his way through the rows of graves, leaving flags at those of local veterans in honor of Memorial Day.
The 80-year-old Coeur d’Alene native has joined fellow members of the Coeur d’Alene Veterans of Foreign Wars decorating the cemetery for the holiday since 1988.
While many of the veterans will put out flags today, Shepperd got a head start Friday. He stopped frequently to share stories about the names he recognized.
“There’s one that says, ‘I told you I was sick,’ ” he said, then went off to find the headstone to prove it. He said he’d once told a guy in Boise about the headstone, but the man didn’t believe him. “I took a picture and sent it to him,” Shepperd said.
He’s been placing flags long enough that he knows exactly which graves belong to veterans – even unmarked graves or those hidden by trees and shrubs.
“He died in 1958,” Shepperd said, squeezing between two giant pink rhododendron bushes flanking the grave of World War I veteran Ray G. Tierney. Shepperd said Veterans Day is the “fun day.”
“That’s when we celebrate the end of whatever war we were in,” he said. “Memorial Day is the day we honor the dead that fought.”
Dusty Rhoads, president of the Vietnam Vets Panhandle Chapter, agreed that Memorial Day is a time to pay tribute to those who made the “ultimate sacrifice.”
He said it’s also important to remember those who are still fighting. “We ought to be thinking about those kids that are on the front lines in harm’s way,” Rhoads said.
During the first couple of years of the war in Iraq, Rhoads said attendance at Memorial Day ceremonies and Veterans Day events increased.
He said he believes controversy over the war has worn on people. “So many people got tired, I think, and decided to take the three-day weekend and go fish,” he said.
In 2000, Congress created a “national moment of remembrance,” asking people nationwide to observe one minute of silence at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day each year. Rhoads wants everyone to stop what they’re doing at 3 p.m. Monday – no matter where they are – and take a minute to remember.