Memorial Day services span area
TEXARKANA, Texas — While the United States has come a long way as a nation, it needs to give thought to its direction, local Vietnam Veterans of America President Greg Beck said Monday.
“I think we could be going in the wrong way,” Beck said during the organization’s 37th annual Memorial Day celebration, a reference to mass shooting Thursday that left 21 dead at a Uvalde, Texas, school.
“We’ve got to take back our country, because our freedoms and rights may not last much longer, especially when you see what’s happened in Uvalde and the way people want to take away our rights to defend ourselves,” Beck said to the crowd of nearly 100 at the Korea-Vietnam Memorial in downtown Texarkana.
Beck said he recently read a survey showing that if America had to go to war again, 70% of respondents said they would leave the country instead of take up arms.
The VVA president then switched gears to focus on fallen service members. He said families who have lost loved ones in war will always feel the pain, but the situation is different for families with someone designated missing in action. For them, Beck said, there is no closure.
“If you have ever had to look into the eyes of people who still have relatives listed as MIA, their eyes will pull your heart right out of you.”
During a later Memorial Day commemoration — Remembering our Heroes at Hillcrest Cemetery — Dr. Kyle Peters, pastor of Myrtle Springs Baptist Church, said there are still more then 81,000 Americans listed as MIA. Many of those were prisoners of war held aboard so-called “hell ships” bound for Japan during World War II.
“There is no one more deserving of honor than those who go directly toward danger,” he said. “We want them to know that they will never be forgotten.”