The gravesites at Dallas Fort Worth National Cemetery were marked with American flags waving in the stiff breeze as far as the eye could see.
“Well today is a beautiful day,” Virginia Treadway said sitting next to her veteran husband Larry’s flower-lined headstone. “I told him when we first got here, we have lots of company today!”
The crowds came back for the first time since the pandemic for a Memorial Day ceremony at the cemetery.
“Today our nation pauses for Memorial Day,” 10th Air Force Commander Major General Bryan Radliff said. “When called, we will defend our freedom. We will defend our communities. We will defend one another, and we will defend our way of life.”
The fallen were remembered with a wreath placed on the stage, and a reading of names of the fallen veterans who were buried at Dallas Fort Worth National Cemetery.
“We will not be separated by gender, by race, by a nation of origin,” Radliff said. “For we are one from many. E Pluribus Unum.
Approximately 69,000 veterans and their eligible dependents are interred at DFW National Cemetery.
The ceremony ended with a cannon salute and a single bugle playing Taps.
“It is so wonderful to know that the American people do recognize the veterans and they come out and celebrate them, love them, and remember them,” Treadway said as she bent to kiss her husband’s grave.
