Carl and I accompanied Mom to the annual Memorial Day Services at the Valley View Cemetery in Roxbury. The Roxbury community always does a memorable job putting on this event. Like many small towns of Kansas the population is dwindling and those who do the heavy lifting are aging. But the Memorial Day Service is something that this community sees as a job worth doing well! Earlene Marston, Carol Decker, Milan Henne, Lois Johnson, and others are faithful volunteers of this service. The names of all veterans and auxiliary members (from the Civil War to the Iraq War) from the community and those laid to rest in the cemetery are read . The service appropriately ends with Mark Casebeer, bugler, playing TAPS.
My father was a veteran of WWII . Early in his military career he trained new recruits the art of hand-to-hand combat. I asked him once if he ever got hurt, he replied, “I was the teacher, I was always better!” If you knew my dad, I believed him! Many evenings on our daily trip to the barn for the 2nd milking of the dairy cows, Dad and I would either race to the barn or he would teach me simple, but effective, self-defense tactics. Later in his military career, he drove an amphibious tank, a “water buffalo,” he called it, in the Pacific Theater. These stories I knew nothing about until, as an adult and U.S. history teacher, I began to inquire into his service during the war. Even my mother had never heard the stories. It was something he rarely talked about, never boasted about, but was forever proud to have served. When Dad was laid to rest in the Valley View Cemetery in Roxbury, KS, his coffin was flag-draped and Mark Casebeer played TAPS.
