DALLAS (1080 KRLD) - It wasn’t the ceremony that it had hoped for; nonetheless, DFW National Cemetery held a wreath-laying ceremony in honor of the military veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Normally, there would be close to 10,000 people at DFW National Cemetery honoring the veterans who lost their lives while protecting our freedoms.
“Because of the virus, we had to cancel our program — no flyovers, no cannon salutes, no high-ranking officer doing a speech,” said Larry Williams, DFW National Cemetery director, during the five-minute ceremony.
The wreath was laid by Gary Poplin, Senior Chief of U.S. Navy (retired) and director of the Texas National Cemetery Foundation.
“It's a function of continuity,” Poplin said after the brief ceremony. “We've never had an event that we have not held out here. And the fact that we’re able to do this, at least there's a continuity, even though it's not as large an event.”
Poplin, who has never missed a Memorial Day service in the 20 years that DFW National Cemetery has held them, is glad that there was a brief commemoration this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It doesn't have all of the lights, bells, and whistles that we normally have,” says Poplin. “We can at least say that we did have an event.”
The public Memorial Day ceremony isn’t the only thing that has been halted at the cemetery.
“We do over 4500 burials a year in honor of our veterans,” says Williams. “But because of the virus and everything, we have not been able to provide what we normally do.”
Poplin offered a reminder of what Memorial Day is truly about.
“Memorial day is our ceremony when we remember the dead,” says Poplin. “It is a solemn occasion, not to be confused with Veterans Day, which is a ‘rah-rah-rah, we won the war.’”
Following the playing of Taps and a moment of silence, Williams closed the short ceremony by urging folks to honor the military heroes who gave the ultimate sacrifice in their own way.
“Everybody can go in and actually do their own memorial for our honored veterans, our American heroes,” Williams said. “We don't have to have a big program or parades or anything else like that for us to memorialize our veterans.”