Community honors veterans

Tami Jo Nix/The Madera Tribune Veteran’s of Foreign War Post 1981 past commander Doug Nelson and VFW Auxillery President Cindy Wood lay wreaths at the Veterans’ Memorial at Arbor Vitae on Memorial Day.

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The first “Decoration Day” ceremonies were almost funereal, said District 1 County Supervisor Brett Frazier in his keynote speech at the annual Memorial Courthouse Park Memorial Day ceremonies. “They were very somber because they were held in the winter,” he said. They were not the “barbecue holidays” that we think of them as today.

He said we sometimes forget that Memorial Day is a commemoration of lives lost in service to the nation.

“These were the lives of the young,” he said. “What did the world lose because they were killed?

“I want to thank each and every soldier, sailor and airman who gave his or her live so that the rest of us could live free.”