It isn’t called Family Fun Day; take time to remember

The last Monday in May has been set aside as a national holiday. It is often called the unofficial first day of summer. Families gather, attend picnics or outdoor barbeques, go to parades and do countless other fun things all to be enjoyed.

But the holiday is not named Family Fun Day. It is officially, as declared by Congress, “Memorial Day.”

It is wonderful that we can enjoy all the fun things we do. Sue and I will continue to enjoy it this year as we have in the past. And I hope you will, too.

But it’s important that, at least for a time on that day, we pause to remember why we have the freedom to play and have fun in this democracy we call home.

It’s because nearly 667,000 American service men and women laid down their lives in combat to guarantee it. More than twice that number were wounded.

It goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War and continues to this very day. Men and women in the armed forces putting their lives on the line every day so that we can enjoy our family fun.

Let me talk about World War II in particular and the local impact.

Imlay City lost thirteen soldiers: Ronald M. Betker, William J. Elliott, Milton Stamman, Tyes Boven, Rudolph Moseok, Ervin A. Stern, Eldon E. Watson, Lyle Brown, Robert F. Powers, William W. Utley, Donald L. Diebel, Arnold Schell, and Merle Youngs.

One of the first casualties of the war was a Capac man. Nineteen-year-old Seaman First Class Robert Albert Petz, a friend of my dad’s, was killed at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, the “date which will live in infamy” according to FDR.

He died when his ship, the destroyer USS Shaw, was hit by a Japanese bomb in the forward powder magazine and exploded in a huge fireball.

6,821 Americans died at the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific, later immortalized by Joe Rosenthal’s famous picture of the American flag-raising atop Mt. Suribachi.

On February 22, 1945, one day before the flag-raising, Almonter Earl Greenman, Jr. was one of those killed in action on that volcanic island. The Private First Class had joined the Marines in January, 1943.

Another Almonter, Army PFC Frederick Norman Miles, also perished in the Pacific Theater of the war on Leyte Island in the Philippines on November 5, 1944.

Several Almont men were killed in action in the European Theater including 28 year-old Medical Corpsman PFC Edward Bechtel, who died on June 7, 1944 after storming Omaha Beach the day before, D-Day.

Army Staff Sergeant Ralph H. Glassford, Berlin Township, died fighting in France with Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army and is interred in France.

Almonter Army PFC Rexford Smith died in Belgium on November 4, 1944. He was with the 415th Infantry Regiment and was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. The 22 year-old rests in the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Belgium.

Army PVT J. D. D’Arcy, 22, was killed in Germany on March 11, 1945 less than two months before the Nazi surrender. He lies in the same American Cemetery in Luxembourg where Gen. Patton is buried.

Staff Sergeant Alfred Langridge, Almont, was in the 7th Engineer Battalion, 5th Infantry and was killed in action on March 14, 1945 while smashing through the Siegfried Line after the Battle of the Bulge during the push to Berlin.

The Nazis surrendered on May 8, 1945.

These are but a few of the names of Almonters who died for their country who are forever in our hearts and carved in stone on a monument in Memorial Park.

Others include Richard Campbell, Richard Hoyt, Leslie Millikin, Franklin Schocke, John Turner, Roy E. Park, Karl Singer, Sheldon Yoder, Joseph Marshall and Charles Sharpe.

So, yes, please enjoy some family fun on Memorial Day. It’s what they died for. But let’s all pause to remember their sacrifice and be grateful. May they rest in peace.

Memorial Monument in Almont
Imlay City Memorial

Contact Rick at dave@tri-citytimes.com