Acworth Marks Memorial Day

Dozens of people, including veterans and their families, active-duty personnel and the family of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, turned out to remember fallen American heroes at the service at .

Alderman Gene Pugliese was the master of ceremonies for the event and recounted the words of Gen. James A. Garfield, the future president, who spoke during the first Memorial Day (then called Decoration Day) on May 30, 1868.

“We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke. But we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue,” quoted Pugliese.

“We honor these men for serving our country and protecting the public,” said Eric Cain, the sound engineer at the event. “These men have paid the price for our freedom.”

During the invocation, the Rev. Robert Ross spoke of the sacrifices that all servicemen have made to keep this nation free.

"We recognize that all gave some, but some gave all," he said. "We realize our freedom is not free; that these veterans we memorialize paid for it."

Many people at the ceremony served our country.

Second Lt. Wilton H. Power served as a navigator in a B-17 during World War II. On June 13, 1943, Power's bomber was shot down during a raid on U-boat pens in Germany. Power was captured and spent two years in a German prisoner of war camp before Gen. George S. Patton's men liberated him near the end of the war.

Power attende with his wife, Chris, Bill Venable (who served in the Army Corps of Engineers), and his daughter Diana.

Fred Moore served during World War II as a Marine on the USS Lexington, an aircraft carrier. He was in attendance with his wife, Betty.

“I spent 17 months at sea, and we got paid $5 a month,” Moore said. “I got injured and lost some of my hearing, so I ended up in a hospital and got my back pay. I got $800! That was a lot of money back then.”

Lt. Col. Phil Kensinger, who served in the 7th Army during campaigns in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, attended the ceremony with a large contingent of friends and family. Kensinger survived the battles of Anzio and Monte Cassino, which broke the back of the German army that occupied Italy after its government surrendered to the Allies in 1943.

Brig. Gen. Jerry Bradford was the main speaker at the event.

“Last year, I did a lot of research before I gave my speech,” he said. “Unfortunately, the lady who spoke two places in front of me had done the same research. This year, I'm just going to speak from the heart.”

Bradford mentioned an epiphany he had several years ago. Before that time, he had never given Memorial Day much thought. At a Memorial Day service, he remembered the 23 acquaintances, half of them friends, he lost during the Vietnam War.

"I realized that after I left Vietnam, I had never allowed myself to remember them," the retired general said. He spent the next week calling and reconnecting with his friends' widows, and he calls them every Memorial Day.

Bradford served two tours in Vietnam and led every unit from a platoon of 42 men to a brigade of 2,500 to 4,000 soldiers.

Bradford commented on the real meaning of Memorial Day; while many see it as the start of summer, it should be a day we honor and remember our fallen soldiers.

Although many people on Memorial Day mourn the loss of friends or loved ones, Bradford paraphrased Patton, who once told people: "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived."

Bradford cited a powerful statistic to drive home the impact of Memorial Day: Since the Revolutionary War, roughly 48 million men and women have served in the U.S. armed forces, and 1.3 million, or nearly three out of every 100, have been killed in the line of duty.

One of those three was Pfc. Jacob Anthony Dennis.

Dennis, a graduate of , enlisted in the Army on Sep. 11, 2006. After training at Fort Benning, he was slated to deploy with the 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Divison for Afghanistan when he had a surgical procedure that would have allowed him to skip his deployment.

“Those are my brothers,” Dennis said. “I will support them, and I will serve with them.”

He deployed to Afghanistan in January 2010.

On June 30, Dennis suffered injuries in a weapons system accident at Forward Operating Base Lane in Zabul Province, Afghanistan. He was transported to Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany, where he died July 3.

At the Memorial Day service in Acworth, Dennis' family was presented a paving stone that will be added to the Veterans Memorial at Patriots Point. The stone, inscribed with his name, unit, and when and where he was killed, will remain forever as a reminder of the sacrifices made by so many soldiers throughout our nation's history.