Community gathers to salute those who gave their lives in service to their country
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on May 26, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
Todd Doss, American Legion Wayne Post 11 commander, salutes during the singing of the national anthem with his wife, Lisa, and son Thomas, 11, at the start of the Memorial Day ceremony.
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
James Carter, retired Army, center, salutes during the singing of the national anthem at the Memorial Day ceremony at the Veterans Memorial.
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Melissa Watkins, Gold Star Wife, and her son, William, 13, and daughter, Mary Allison, 11, stand for the playing of taps with 4th Fighter Wing Vice Commaner Col. Andrew Bernard, who also spoke at the event, after presenting the Memorial Day wreath. Mrs. Watkins presented the wreath in honor of her husband, William Watkins, who was killed while serving with the Air Force in Iraq.
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Gail Hargrove, left, stands and joins in during the Marine portion of the singing of the Medley of Service Songs beside veteran Don Peters. Mrs. Hargrove said she stands for her missing husband, Cpl. Joseph Hargrove, at ceremonies because he cannot.
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Master Sgt. Jamie Farnell, left, and James Loper, 916th Air Refueling Wing command chief, stand holding flags at the Wayne County Veterans Memorial with the Guardian Brotherhood for the Memorial Day Ceremony on Monday.
C. Ray Smith had already made up his mind that he wasn't coming back from his deployment.
Going into his mission, his supervisors had told him they would be lucky if 10 percent of the men that went on the mission came back alive.
He was only in high school, but he was 18 -- and the Army had just drafted Smith into the infantry to fight in World War II in the Pacific Theater.
"Because of my age and trying to get out of high school, my dad had my draft put off until I graduated," Smith said. "I didn't graduate until June 27, 1945. Then after I graduated, I went to Fort Bragg, and went from there to Camp Croft in South Carolina to take the infantry training. We were training for the invasion of Japan."
But before Smith -- now 88 -- could deploy on what was sure to be a nearly guaranteed suicide mission, former President Harry Truman made the call to drop atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
If not for that decision, Smith said, he would not have been able to sit in Wayne Community College's Moffatt Auditorium on Memorial Day Monday morning and listen to nearly 100 attendees pay tribute to the men and women of the United States' armed services who did not come home.
"I was not in combat, I was never in combat," Smith said. "I never went overseas. But at the time when I went in, Germany had already surrendered just about a month before I went in. So we started training for the invasion of Japan, and we were told if 10 percent that went in came back out of that invasion, we'd be lucky. I made up my mind right then that I wasn't coming back. But when boss man Truman said to drop the atom bombs, that made a difference. We were getting ready to go into more training when they dropped the bombs, and that saved my life, that's why I'm here today -- because they dropped those bombs."
But Memorial Day is not about those who came home.
That's why Smith was there in that auditorium Monday.
It is about honoring those who lost their lives in service to their country.
That's why Melissa Watkins and her two children -- William, 13, and Mary Allison, 11 -- were there, too.
They know all too well what price some pay for freedom.
At Monday morning's ceremony, they were guests of honor.
Mrs. Watkins lost a husband and William and Mary Allison a father.
William Watkins was killed in action in Tikrit, Iraq, on April 7, 2003.
"It never goes away when you've had loss," Mrs. Watkins said. "To be remembered is nice, especially since we aren't from here. We weren't born and raised in Goldsboro, but my kids were born here."
Mrs. Watkins also served in the Air Force in Intel operations. When her husband's plane went down, she said, she knew the exact coordinates of the downed plane.
It took two full weeks before her husband's death was confirmed.
"It was a Sunday night and I was at home," Mrs. Watkins said. "It was probably eight o'clock, nine o'clock, and I had heard the plane had gone down. And you know, you just know when you hear something like that. It was a couple of weeks before we knew for sure, but when it happened I just knew. The vice wing commander at the time, Dave Russell, came out to the house and he was in his flight suit. I would've seen him anyway the next morning at work, because I worked at the base, and he showed up at my door on a Sunday night very uncharacteristically and at that point I just knew."
She said the next few weeks were a blur of decision-making and emotional processing.
"You start thinking about, 'Well, OK, what am I going to do now?' You shift into, 'What do we do now?' mode," Ms. Watkins said. "You start thinking about who to tell and who not to tell. His mother was my first thought, really, because my mother was with me but I thought about how to tell his mother and tell her that something had gone on and happened to her son, because she was not physically well at the time."
Mrs. Watkins said as a member of the military herself, and by coming from a military family, she always knew the possibility of her husband dying in combat was present.
"People I had known had died in aircraft crashes and you know it's always a possibility," she said. "But then again, you can get hit by a car, so what are the odds? Actually the odds are less that you're going to be killed in combat than the national average of dying in a car."
Mrs. Watkins, who is a retired Air Force major, was honored as a Gold Star representative in memory of her husband.
Because of her husband's sacrifice, she joined 4th Fighter Wing Vice Commander Col. Andrew Bernard, in laying the ceremonial wreath at both the Wayne Community College ceremony, and at the National Moment of Silence held at 3 p.m. Monday at the Wayne County Veterans Memorial on Walnut Street.
Smith said he only wished more people would come to the ceremonies -- and that he would be able to make it to next year's event, to pay tribute.
"It makes me wanna cry," Smith choked out as tears came down his face. "These people lived and died for other people, and it makes it worse to look back and see a thin pool of people. It should be full and running over, but people don't care anymore. They'd rather go down to the beach or something like that."