Today one of my daughters marched in the Cuyahoga Falls Memorial Day Parade with her Daisy/Girl Scouts troop. My wife, other daughters and I dropped off the parade Daisy and drove to the end of the parade. Oakwood Cemetery was the end of the route so walked through and read gravestones while we waited for the parade to reach us.
The end of the parade and entrance to the cemetery was adorned with over 4,000 yellow ribbons.
Each ribbon had a tag with the name of a fallen Gulf War soldier. I decided to read tags until I found a female soldier. Once at home I researched the one I found. Sgt. Cari Anne Gasiewicz, 28, spoke fluent Arabic and served as an interpreter in a military intelligence unit of the Army; she was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Also in the picture are the tags of of Joe J. Garza and Juan Guadalupe Garza Jr. Army 1st Sgt. Joe J. Garza, 43, was killed in a vehicular accident in Baghdad. He was my age when he died. He had three children and had been married 24 years. Marine Pfc. Juan Guadalupe Garza Jr. was killed by a sniper; he was newlywed. The ribbons and research brought Memorial Day home for me. (The portraits are not part of the tags.)
The Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi was my favorite of the parade.
