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Memorial Day ceremony at Welborn Cemetery Saturday
“This cemetery was started 150 years ago,” Mikki Johnson told the 35 people attending the Memorial Day ceremony at Welborn Cemetery located northwest of Moundville Saturday morning.
Johnson said that Boy Scout Troup 42, from the Nevada United Methodist Church, was raising a flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol.
“Ceremonies like this are taking place all over the country,” Lt. Col. Barney Fisher, Ret., said during the ceremony Saturday.
At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, some veterans are going to the wall and putting their hand next to a name. Those veterans and family members represent many things, including dreams lost, Fisher said.
“Bill Boroughs was drafted in 1941 by the Chicago White Sox. He was also drafted by Uncle Sam after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and by the spring of 1942, he was in New Guinea. He spent the next four years in the South Pacific,” Fisher said.
“By that time his dream vanished,” he said.
He returned from the war, went to work and lived like he was supposed to, Fisher said.
Wiping his eye, Fisher said the mothers and wives of those who served kept the home fires burning and are often forgotten for the role they played.
Fisher said while he was in the Marines he did four overseas tours of duty and when he was within 10 days of going home there was a briefing on how to act when they got home.
“We were told don’t come back and act like ‘I’m home and boss again.’ While you were gone your wife has been running things,” Fisher said.
“That was good advice. Those wives and mothers were veterans too,” he said.
Mikki Johnson, who was the emcee Saturday, said after the ceremony she remembers coming to Welborn Cemetery as a child with her grandfather. He would bring two white chairs with him each year, and sit there all day and greet people who came to the cemetery.
Johnson said she would sell lemonade to make a little money.
Saturday she had bottles of water and handed out U.S. Flag pins.