Avoyelles remembers nation’s fallen warriors

   Across the parish, state and nation the 1.2 million fallen defenders of this nation’s liberty were remembered and honored in speeches, prayers and military ceremonies this past Monday, Memorial Day.

   The first acts that became Memorial Day occurred in 1866, in Northern and Southern communities still grieving from the losses that occurred in the Civil War.

   The first formal “Decoration Day” ceremony was on May 30, 1868 in Arlington Cemetery. Former Union Gen. John A. Logan, an official in the Grand Army of the Republic U.S. veterans organization, issued a proclamation on May 5, 1868 designating May 30 “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. ... We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance ....”

   In that first Decoration Day ceremony, James A. Garfield -- a former Union general, sitting U.S. representative from Ohio and a future President -- delivered an address considered by many to best sum up the meaning of every Memorial Day that has come since or will be held in the future.

   In that address, Garfield said, “If silence is ever golden, it must be here, beside the graves of 15,000 men, whose lives were more significant than speech and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung.

   “With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue,” Garfield continued. “Promises may not be kept, plighted faith may be broken and vaunted virtue be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke, but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.”

   Decoration Day was first called Memorial Day in 1882. The new name did not gain popularity until after World War I.

   On June 28, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the “Uniform Holiday Bill," setting the last Monday of May as Memorial Day, effective in 1971. 

 

    If one local event could represent all, it probably would be the ceremonies at the Avoyelles Veterans Memorial at Paragon Casino Resort.

    Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. John Bordelon, of Bunkie, served as master of ceremonies. Veteran Harris Ducote of Mansura was special speaker for the event.

   “Throughout our nation’s history, America’s uniformed servicemen have died bravely serving our country,” Bordelon said. “Today, families and communities across the nation are taking time to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation.”

    Bordelon said Memorial Day is a holiday that is “both celebration and grief, accounting for the honor of our heroes and reflecting on their tragic loss.”

    More than 218,000 U.S. servicemen are buried in 25 American cemeteries on foreign soil, he said. Most of those died in the two world wars. Those cemeteries are “designated American soil and part of the United States,” Bordelon said, adding that those plots of ground are “earned, owned and maintained by Americans. We must never forget those who have died in battle so that we must live in peace.”

 

   Ducote finished basic training in the Navy the week the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan in August 1945. He was discharged in 1946 and recalled in 1950 to fight in the Korean War, leaving the Navy again in 1952.

    He has been active in advocating for veterans rights for many years.

    “We all know about the medals and heroics” of the nation’s warriors, Ducote said, but we often forget “about the many, many griefs” of battle.

  For example, Ducote said that many of those who died in the Civil War died in agony from wounds on the battlefield because there were no Chinook helicopters and ambulances to carry them to hospitals that could have saved their lives. Many more died of diseases while in the service of their country, he added.

  Much of Ducote’s address dealt with the plight of surviving veterans, whom he said are not receiving the benefits that were promised or the respect they deserve from the Office of Veterans Affairs.

   Ducote said it is unfortunate that America’s young adults know more about the Kardashian family and the late entertainer Prince than they do about the meaning of the 1st and 2nd Amendments of the Constitution and the price paid to ensure those freedoms.

   A national tragedy that has gone largely unaddressed is the disturbingly high suicide rate among veterans, which Ducote said is about 20 per day.

   Causes of those suicides include the denial of health care and other benefits, homelessness and unemployment.

   Ducote urged everyone to contact their congressman and senators to demand fair treatment of the nation’s veterans

  In addition to the ceremony at the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe’s monument, events were also held Monday at the veterans memorial on the Mansura Walking Track, in St. Joseph Cemetery No. 1 in Marksville, at the Veterans Memorial at the Ward 1 Walking Track in Effie and at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Bunkie.