MONTEREY TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — Dozens watched as a local Boy Scout troop raised the U.S Flag to the top of the mast, then back to center.
As the national anthem played, those who gathered at Monterey Township's Poplar Hill Cemetery near Hopkins treated Memorial Day not as the unofficial start of summer but rather as a day to remember those who died in service to their country.
"That is what Memorial Day is all about: remembering those who gave that ultimate sacrifice," Comer Skinner, the guest speaker at the ceremony, said. "The ones that are buried in a foreign land and a national cemetery."
Behind the speaker stand stood members ofVeterans of Foreign WarsPost 7581 in Wayland, mainstays at Memorial Day Events and veterans' funerals.
“It's an honor for us, especially for me, to be able to serve and do this," Post Honor Guard Members Tim McKinnon said.
As the ceremony drew to a close, members of the honor guard fired a three-volley salute.
"For us, being in the service, it's not part of the barbecues, the sales at all the stores. For us, it's remembering the sacrifices that those people made, that we're still making," said McKinnon, a retired staff sergeant who spent 24 years in the Michigan National Guard, including a one-year tour in Iraq in 2005 at the height of the war.
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