Garner celebrated its heroes on Monday, Nov. 11 during its 11th annual Veterans Day Observance at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
Aversboro Road Baptist Church welcomed a large group for a breakfast furnished by the Poole Family YMCA, a 30-minute concert by the Garner Magnet High School wind ensemble and a brisk-paced celebration of the community’s many veterans.
Veterans Day is a day of celebration. Memorial Day remembers those service members who were killed while in the service, but Veterans Day honors everyone who has served in our nation’s military.
The heroes who died while in the service were remembered, but so were those who survived. There were veterans from World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam Conflict. In fact, retired U.S. Army Col. Robert Ripley fought in all three of those wars and was sitting on the fourth row.
All the veterans in attendance were recognized as the ensemble played “Armed Forces Medley of the United States” and again as Rodney Dickerson, the town manager doubling as the master of ceremonies, spoke from the heart as he thanked the service personnel for answering the call of country.
Dr. Jeffrey Sholar, the pastor of Aversboro Road Baptist, opened with an invocation that spoke of honor, respect and thanksgiving and just about summed up the entire event beneath a gleaming stained-glass window that filled the ceremony with a soft light befitting the occasion.
As is the tradition of the event, the Aversboro Elementary School Choir, under the direction of Christy Root, sang and provided the link between all the service men and women who have served and the future of the country.
Cindy Parsons, a spokesperson for the Wounded Warrior Project, was the keynote speaker and told her story, a story filled with grief, brutality, resiliency and hope.
Her 17-year-old son Shane wanted to enlist in the military the day after the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. She persuaded him to wait until he graduated from high school.
Shane joined the U.S. Army and was in Iraq when he volunteered to go on a mission, even though it was supposed to be his day off.
An explosive device destroyed his Humvee and amputated his legs above the knee. He suffered a severe brain injury and only exceptional medical care saved his life. Years of rehabilitation have given him a new life.
He moved from hospital to hospital and kept repeating his mantra, “You can be bitter or you can get better.”
He probably will never be able to read or write again. But he is getting better and is active in sports, including downhill skiing, parachuting, hand bikes and sled hockey.
Earlier in the observance, the wind ensemble, under the direction of Melissa Holmes, played an inspiring version of “It Is Well,” a song written by Horatio Spafford soon after his four daughters drown in an ocean liner collision.
It really is well despite the horror, the pain, the anguish, Parson said.
“If Shane wheeled into here today _ he cannot use prosthetics because his injuries were too high _ and you asked him if he would do it again,” Parson said, often pausing with emotion. “Would he enlist and go to Iraq, knowing what would happen to him.
“He would say, ‘Yes. I love my country.’”