The Sweet Home Veterans of Foreign Wars post held a memorial ceremony Friday honoring those who were killed last week in terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
“At this time, we pause in quietness and reverence, pay tribute to the memory of our fellow Americans,” Marion Fritts said, then quoting Helen Keller, “Surely, we would not weep if some beloved friend has the good fortune to move from a humble and uncomfortable house to a mansion into which the sunlight had streamed and whose grounds are a never-ending maze of beauty and wonder and delight. We would say that, that was a fortunate friend; and a bit wistfully, we would look forward to a time when we, too, might leave the burden of our daily tasks and join Him in His house of beauty and light.”
Reading from the Scriptures, Fritts shared Jesus Christ’s words, “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die. Peace, I leave with you; My peace I give unto you; let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
The ceremony concluded with the firing of several volleys by veterans organizations.
Following the memorial service, participants visited with each other inside the VFW Hall.
“I think these people have something to answer for,” Fritts said following the ceremony. “I think it was a pretty cowardly act.”
Fritts said he was watching television at the time of the attacks.
“It was really kind of a disbelief,” Fritts, a retired Navy master chief, said of his reaction. “Then they got to elaborating on what actually did happen.”
A Japanese fleet commander said after Pearl Harbor in 1941 that “I think we have awakened a sleeping giant,” Fritts said. “I believe this might be the case once people are identified.”
“It’s devestating,” Linda Delano, AMVETS Auxiliary president, said. “I just feel like they need to pay. In the past, it was always on foreign soil, and we need to stop it before it gets worse.”
She was getting ready for work when her daughter told her what happened.
“It was a shocker to see,” Delano said. “This was a well-planned thing. They had this in the works for a long time.”
She was proud of the veterans groups gathered Friday. They were banded together in prayer.