County Memorial Day ceremony honors fallen service members

Congressman Michael Waltz, who represents Florida's District 6, encouraged attendees to honor fallen service members' lives by contributing to the community.

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Before a crowd of about 200 assembled beneath the shade of the Government Services Building for Flagler County's Memorial Day ceremony, Congressman Michael Waltz, an Army lieutenant colonel who served across the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan as a Green Beret, told the audience about two soldiers he'd known who died protecting their comrades.

One man, despite recurring premonitions of his own death that led him to write more than a dozen farewell letters to friends, loved ones and comrades, led a charge against a Taliban machine gun nest. The other volunteered to be on point during patrols through insurgent territory, checking for trip wires that would detonate improvised explosive devices. One day, Waltz said, the soldier missed one, and it killed him.

"I think about that conversation, when he said, 'Sir, I want to go out front;' I think about that ever single day," Waltz said. "I think about so many others, so many that aren't here with us. ... But the bottom line is ...  Am I doing today what's worthy of his sacrifice? I think we all should think about our lives that way. Every day should be Memorial Day: Are we as Americans stepping up every day to be worthy of their sacrifice?"

The ceremony also recognized the World War Two service of Joseph Brady Wadsworth, a Bunnell High School senior class president who dropped out of school at 19 to enlist in the Marines. He served for a year, a month and nine days before he was shot in three places charging Japanese troops with his bayonet, and was discharged from the service, Sisco Deen, Flagler County historian, told the audience. Brady died in 2002. Family members received a plaque in his name at the ceremony.

Wadsworth, much later, had written his impressions of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Deen said. Wadsworth's first reaction was anger at the Japanese, Wadsworth wrote, but, "My second reaction was to grow from a boy of 19 years to a man of 19 years. I knew my country needed me, and I knew that I had to enlist."

Brady had been one of 276 Flagler County residents at the time who served in the war. Of those, 12 died, Deen said. Wadsworth's Bunnell High School class of 1942, Deen said, "turned out to be a high school class of honor, a class of heroes," with 23 serving in the military. 

The ceremony also included an introduction by County Commission Chairman Donald O'Brien, the ringing of a bell for Last Roll Call in recognition of departed service organization members, the placing of wreaths at the county's military service monument, the singing of the National Anthem by the FPC Formality Singers, an invocation and a benediction by Chaplain Harry Gilman, and the singing by Vince Cautero of "God Bless the USA."

 

 

 

 

 

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