Advertisement Fern Jacobs, Kathryn Kirchner and Susan Dewhirst received yellow roses as Gold Star Mothers from Miss Poppy Megan Saley. Women are honored as Gold Star Mothers when they have lost a child in combat. For many years, the Onalaska Gold Star Mothers’ losses were decades old, the Vietnam War claiming their sons.
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Susan Dewhirst receives a yellow rose from Onalaska American Legion Commander Jim Nelson. Dewhirst joined the ranks of Gold Star Mothers after her son, 1st. Lt. Nick Dewhirst, was killed July 20, 2008, in Afghanistan.
Photo by Jo Anne Killeen |
Not this year. This was Dewhirst’s first year as a Gold Star Mother. Her son, Army 1st. Lt. Nick Dewhirst, was killed July 20, 2008, in Afghanistan.
While the Dewhirsts have attended numerous Memorial Day ceremonies, going back to the days when Nick was a Cub Scout helping to lay wreaths on graves, this was the first Memorial Day service Susan and Randy Dewhirst attended as grieving parents. They took their usual place in the audience, not joining the other Gold Star Mothers seated near the speakers’ podium.
The Dewhirsts wanted to take part in a treasured ritual, but they didn’t want to be the center of attention because of their loss.
“It’s a nice ceremony. We’ve been going for a number of years and we’ll continue to go,” Randy said. “The community has been a great support. We’re just trying to move on. ... We do appreciate people respecting our privacy.”
Nick was a 2006 graduate of West Point Military Academy, where he was buried with a shard from his grandfather’s downed jet beside him in the coffin. Susan’s father, a pilot, died in 1951 while on a training flight.
Battling wind and microphone problems, Miss Onalaska Sarah Beier opened the ceremonies singing an a cappella rendition of the national anthem. The Onalaska High School Band, conducted by Dawson Strutt, accompanied Dan Lefebvre in the armed forces salute.
Mayor Mike Giese, a Vietnam War veteran, thanked the thousands who lost limbs as well as lives. “Thank you to those who gave life, limb and sometimes mind.”
Claude Deck, chaplain of Onalaska American Legion Struck-Klandrud Post No. 336, and Al Topel, the Onalaska Legion’s roll call officer, read more than 700 names of Onalaska’s military veterans who have died, although only a very small fraction of them were killed in combat.
Command Army Sgt. Maj. George Stopper, who gave the main address, said more than 1 million lives have been lost in combat in all the conflicts across the globe and 27,000 Wisconsin service men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice. Those statistics, though, are meaningless, he said.
“They don’t show the quality of the men and women whose dreams are unfulfilled. The numbers reveal no blood, no flesh, no faces.”
Stopper quoted the memorial on the Civil War Monument at Arlington Cemetery: “Not for fame or reward, not for place or for rank, not lured by ambition, or goaded by necessity, but in simple obedience to duty as they understood it, these men suffered all, sacrificed all, dared all and died.
“God bless Wisconsin’s fallen heroes,” Stopper concluded.
