Memorial Day Service, May 31
OAK RIDGE – Oak Ridge resident Gary Blackburn was the keynote speaker at the Town of Oak Ridge’s Memorial Day service, held in Oak Ridge Town Park on May 31. Blackburn served with the U.S. Air Force Security Service from April 1961 to November 1964 in the Far East, and later as a member of the Air Force’s 48th Intelligence Squadron. He retired from Eastern Airlines and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and served as Oak Ridge Military Academy’s commandant of cadets and as director of public alumni relations for seven years. His published books include “Unlikely Warriors,” which he co-authored, and “Those Gentle Heroes,” which was released last December. In his comments, Blackburn offered a touching nod to “the gentle heroes” who have served our country and said it is our duty to remember them. He also shared an excerpt from a poem written by U.S. Army Capt. Michael O’Donnell, a helicopter pilot who died in Vietnam in 1970, three months after writing this poem:
Photo courtesy of Mike Keating
Oak Ridge resident Gary Blackburn (back row, far left, in red sweater), Danny Yanusz (to Blackburn’s right), Special Events Committee member Caroline Ruch (middle row, second from right), Oak Ridge Mayor Ann Schneider (middle row, far right), and members of BSA Troop 600 participated in the Memorial Day service at Oak Ridge Town Park May 31, in addition to other Special Events Committee members and members of the Northwest Guilford Woman’s Club. About 115 citizens, including several veterans, were also in attendance.
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If you are able, save them a place inside of you and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go. Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may not have always. Take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own. And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.
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