Monday, May 30, 2016, dawned clear for the 149th annual Memorial Day Parade and service. Parade units began moving at 10:30 a.m., originating at N. Madison and E. Main Streets, passing crowds gathered in lawn chairs or standing along the route. Morrison Police Department led the procession west along Main Street and north on Genesee Street to Grove Hill Cemetery at High Street, in Morrison, IL. The American Legion Honor Guard carried The Colors, the Legion Post #328 flag, and a Prisoner of War/Missing in Action flag.
Mark Schuler transported, left-to-right, Navy Seaman Petty Officer Second Class Dennis VanZuiden, Guest Speaker Pastor Al Pruis, and Pastor Gerald Norman of Ebenezer Reformed Church.
Jody Bland drove a convertible with his daughter, Charidy. Riding in back were Air Force Reserve Major Amy Johannsen and Mayor Everett Pannier. They were followed by veteran Joe Klimson, escorted by his wife, Pastor Polly.
Returning for a second year, Patriot Guard riders and six members of the Shields Motorcycle Club, based in Dixon, IL, rode. Allen Buikema is a Morrison member of the latter. He explained any Correctional Officer, Police Officer, or Firefighter may join the motorcycle club, because they wore, or wear, a badge.
Jim Prombo opened the ceremonies; Pastor Norman blessed the ceremony with an Invocation. The Colors were posted by Legionnaires, left-to-right, Fred Steele, Bob Brands, Ron Wiersema, Terry Jones, Ken Petersen, and Jerry Brearton, followed by recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. In his debut Memorial Day Ceremony, Band Director Josh Youngs directed the Junior High Band in “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Active Service, Reservist, or Guard members were invited to stand, if possible, or raise a hand, as Prombo called off the decade in which they took their oath. He began with the 1940’s and concluded with the current decade. There was no one who “is about to ship out” this year. A rare tribute was presented to Marvin Geerts, Morrison, by The American Legion, recognizing his 70 years of membership. Five-year-old, great-grandson Brayden Geerts, came to admire the certificate and pin. Ila and Marvin Geerts shared the moment after the ceremony.
The band performed “March of the Free Man.” Instructor Meagan Zahora Choir Director led “Goinig Home.” This is her final Memorial Day performance in Morrison; she will be married this fall.
Viet Nam War veteran Pruis gave the address, printed below.
Prombo thanked those who place flags on U. S. Route 30, IL Route 78, and Main Street and the Legionnaires for putting up and taking down chairs, carrying flags, and marching in the parade.
After the Colors were retired, Pastor Norman–shown at right with Mayor Pannier and Pastor Pruis–offered the Benediction.
Seaman VanZuiden and Major Johannsen placed the floral tribute to remember the lost.
The six-man, three-round, rifle salute was next, followed by the echoing of “Taps” to close the ceremony.
Following is the Rev. Al Pruis’s Memorial Day Address from May 30, 2016.
I am honored to be here today to share in this Memorial Day service. When I was a child I would attend the Memorial Day service at Grove Hill Cemetery with my parents. After the service we would visit some of the gravesites of loved ones, many of whom I never knew while they were living. But as we paused at their tombstones, my parents would share stories about them. These stories were passed on from one generation to another as a reminder of their faith and their good deeds on Earth, before they passed from this life to the next.
But as important as it is to remember loved ones who have gone before us, Memorial Day was established to remember the thousands-upon-thousands of men and women who died in the service of their Country and their fellow man. On Memorial Day there is a tradition of paper poppies being handed out by veterans of the Armed Forces. This tradition was begun by Dr. John McCrae, who served in the Canadian Army in World War I.
In April of 1915 in Flanders, Belgium, the German Army began shelling the trenches of their enemy with chlorine gas. Dr. McCrae helped treat those who were desperately wounded by these attacks, one of whom was his closest friend. Before Dr. McCrae died, just three years after the war, he wrote what became the defining poem of World War I, called “In Flanders Field.” I would like to read that poem for you today.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead
Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high
If you break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
This poem describes so well the sacrifices that have been made in battles of war, in the service of one’s Country, including the ultimate sacrifice of life itself.
During my years as Pastor of Peace Reformed Church in Eagan[, MN,] in the Twin Cities, I conducted many committal services at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, of those who served in the Armed Forces. One that I attended but did not conduct was for a young man who was killed in the Iraq War, just days after he arrived there. I want to share his name today with you. It is Dan Olson. Dan was one of my son’s closest friends in high school, and they were together just three weeks before Dan was killed in Iraq.
Fort Snelling is right next to the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. So, whenever a committal service is being held there, there are planes flying overhead. There are rows-upon-rows of crosses that mark the graves of those who are buried there. Many of those whose bodies are in the graves died on the battlefields of conflict and war, as Dan did. These men and women of honor risked and gave their lives for their Country and their fellow citizens of our land.
One of the longest wars in America’s history was the war in Vietnam. It began in 1964 and ended in 1975. Over 50,000 American men and women died in this war. Hundreds of thousands of others were injured, including many who still endure physical and emotional scars to this very day. And there were some lasting scars to our Nation, as well. The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., includes the names of those who died in the war[; they] are etched on a wall of stone. The Vietnam War Memorial has been called America’s wailing wall….Many thousands of people come each year to stand and walk in silence to read the names on the wall.
When I returned home from the war nearly five decades ago, I never imagined that I would return there one day. But in 2011, I had an opportunity to do so….The denomination in which I serve as Pastor, the Reformed Church in America, arranged for myself and one other pastor, whose name is Pedro, to go to Vietnam….[He] is a Vietnam veteran and now pastors an Hispanic Church in Chicago, [IL]….[We were] to meet with pastors who serve churches there to have a dialogue…that would further the reconciliation of our two Countries.
On Sunday of that week Pedro and I attended a church service in Hanoi, the capitol city of Vietnam. The very name Hanoi represented all that was evil about our enemy during the war, and now we were going to church there. We were a few minutes late for the start of the service, at this very large church in the heart of the City. The church was so full that we had to walk down the aisle to the front pew, which was the only seat left. As we did, all the people in the house were singing the opening song in Vietnamese. It was an old hymn, and Pedro and I knew all the words in English, so were singing it, too….The name of the hymn was “Crown Him with Many Crowns the Lamb Upon His Throne.”
I share that story today, because there is always a bigger picture in the plans of our Creator. And sometimes we don’t see it until a long time later. And sometimes we will not see it in this life, but in the next. But that Sunday morning I got a glimpse of it, which was from these words from a psalm that were written thousands of years ago: “Though there’s darkness in the night, joy comes in the morning.”
There are many dark places in the world today, where people are dying in wars that keep raging on. So, even as we are here today to remember those who gave of their lives in the service of their Country, may it be in the providence of God–from which the bigger picture of life comes–that the long nights of darkness give way to the joy of the morning. And may the mornings be longer, so that the long nights of the darkness of war and death start to fade away.
And to make those mornings longer, let us hear and follow these words that our Lord said on the mountain, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”