A/V: Dayton Remembers their Sacrifices

Rows of headstones, featuring freshly planted flags to honor America's veterans and war dead, at the Dayton National Cemetery on Memorial Day.

A standing-room only crowd of over 300 members of the greater Dayton community turned out last Monday for the annual Memorial Day ceremony at the Dayton National Cemetery.  Malcolm Maddox, former weekend anchor for local ABC/Fox affiliates WKEF/WRGT and current weekend morning anchor for Detroit's ABC station WXYZ, served as the master of ceremonies for the event with Glenn Costie, director fo the Dayton VA Medical Center as the guest speaker.  Charles S. Cooper III, a retired Air National Guard major general and current secretary of the Air Force Museum Foundation, provided the Memorial Day address.  Bernard Blizzard, director of the Dayton National Cemetery, gave the welcome and closing remarks while Father John Butler, chaplain of the Dayton VA Medical Center, offered the invocation and benediction.  Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 657 from  Riverside, Ohio performed the rifle salute while Wright-Patterson Air Force Base's Band of Flight and Honor Guard provided prelude music, played taps and conducted posting and retiring of the colors honors.  Four members of the US Armed Forces along with a representative of the Gold Star Wives of America organization laid two remembrance wreaths at the base of the Dayton Soldiers' Monument.

A/V: Their ‘Times Square’ Moment

Family members anxiously await the return of their veteran relatives at the Dayton International Airport

Last Saturday evening, one area of Dayton was intentionally turned back to a bygone era to help say ‘thank you’ to several dozen men and women who did not get this kind of adulation at the conclusion of their military service decades earlier.  A crowd of about 200 gathered at the Dayton International Airport to provide a heartfelt salute to 34 World War II and Korean War veterans upon their return from a day-long ‘Honor Flight’ excursion to the nation’s capital.  Friends, family members and even complete strangers participated in this patriotic ‘Welcome Home’ ceremony in the airport’s main terminal, which came as a complete surprise to many the unsuspecting travelers.