Posted by
Cyber Pastor on Friday, June 22, 2007 10:09:32 PM
Expecting a huge crowd on Sunday. These articles in the newspaper, and I've been spear-heading the local church drive to put people on the streets.
All 4 of these posts are from The Republic newpaper in Columbus, IN.
www. therepublic.com
Hope will be final home for soldier
IF Lou Broering has his way, family members of Sgt. Michael Bechert will feel as if they’ve come home Sunday afternoon.
He’s hoping that dozens of people, waving small American flags, will line Indiana 9 between the Norman Funeral Home and the entrance to the Hope Moravian Cemetery as the soldier and his family are driven past.
In a way, Sgt. Bechert will be coming home. Home will be a grave in the Hope Moravian cemetery, right next to his mother who died when he was a child.
But, so far as is known, neither Sgt. Bechert nor members of his surviving family ever lived in Hope.
His final resting place was in accordance with his wishes. He wanted to be buried alongside his mother in a large family plot in one of the older sections of the cemetery.
The lack of a personal connection to Bartholomew County is of no concern to Lou Broering, a Hope resident. It also doesn’t matter that he has no personal connection to Sgt. Bechert or his family.
What does matter is that Sgt. Michael Bechert was a soldier and he died in the service of his country from injuries suffered in Iraq.
When Lou read of Sgt. Bechert’s death and plans for burial in Hope, he thought of a box he had been keeping in storage and an old friend.
“I have 24 dozen small American flags that Jim (Griffin) had purchased for special occasions,” Lou wrote. “It occurred to me that it would be fitting to line the road with people (waving those flags) leading to the entrance of the Hope Moravian Cemetery on Sunday.”
Fitting is an understatement in these circumstances.
It’s a wonderful way to recognize a fallen soldier, show compassion for his family and remember another very special person.
That would be Jim Griffin, a man who served his country in an earlier conflict.
Jim Griffin’s name is fairly recognizable around these parts.
This year‘s SALUTE! concert at the Bartholomew County Memorial for Veterans was dedicated in his name. Jim, a former commander of the local American Legion Post and the county’s veterans affairs service officer, threw himself into supporting the concert and other observances recognizing the contributions of those in uniform.
He came by that spirit in painful fashion.
As a Vietnam veteran who served “in-country,” Jim came home to a nation deeply divided by an unpopular war.
The treatment accorded him and other veterans was troubling. He wasn’t abused or spat upon or reviled by anyone who protested the war.
It’s just that no one acknowledged what he and hundreds of thousands of others had done for them.
It was as if the country wanted to forget there was ever a war in which than 50,000 of their countrymen had died.
That nagged at Jim over the years, but he had more important things to deal with, such as supporting a family and living his life.
SALUTE! support
Unlike many of his Vietnam peers, he became involved in local veterans organizations and when the SALUTE! concert was started, he became one of its biggest supporters.
One of those means of support was to buy (with his own money) hundreds of flags to distribute through the SALUTE! audience for people to wave and show their support for the troops.
The response energized the Columbus man. He wept when he saw the way this community embraced young soldiers in training at Camp Atterbury, especially at the concert.
He died suddenly and unexpectedly last year but he left behind a lot of things to remember him.
At this year’s concert, hundreds of small American flags waved throughout the performance. They had been left over from the huge collection of flags Jim had purchased the year before.
And there is also that box of flags that Lou Broering has been waiting to use.
They’ll be put to use Sunday.
“I think Jim would have been very happy to see it happen,” Lou said.
Harry McCawley is associate editor of The Republic, e-mail harry@therepublic.com.
Harry McCawley
Associated Press
Residents of South Bay look at members of a motorcycle club known as Patriot Guard riders as they follow a funeral procession June 1 for Cpl. Joseph Anzack while it travels to South High School’s football stadium in Torrance, Calif., for a public memorial. Lou Broering hopes for a smiliar turnout Sunday in Hope when Sgt. Michael Bechert is buried.