'It's In Honor Of All Veterans': Collinsville Community Remembering Fallen Service Members On Memorial Day

The Collinsville American Legion Post 2 and the VFW 3077 hosted their national moment of remembrance this Memorial Day.

The community came together Monday to pause for one minute to remember those who have died in Military service. For the first time, the names of each service member killed in action who is buried at Ridgelawn Cemetery were read aloud during the ceremony.

Every name read at the ceremony is a service member who paid the ultimate sacrifice and was laid to rest in Collinsville. 

"You don't really appreciate that until you go out there to the cemetery and see those guys laying there," Bud York, a Collinsville Army veteran, said. "We put flags out every year on each veteran's grave. It's a little more significant meaning on those fellas that were K.I.A."

York said while we honor the fallen heroes today, it's important not to forget their families.

"For each service member, there is a family left at home with an empty chair at their table, and they sacrifice as well, sometimes emotionally even more than the service member themselves," said York. 

A father who knows firsthand about that kind of sacrifice is Roger Meyer; he's spending his Memorial Day honoring fallen soldiers through music. His son, Michael Meyer, was a brand new soldier and died two weeks before deploying to Afghanistan to be a combat engineer. 

"He had such great plans for himself, and they were all for naught," Meyer said. "If he would have gone to Kandahar, something could have happened over there with an IED. We knew he was in a dangerous profession, but he was doing what he wanted to do he was trying to make the world safe for everybody."

Michael received full military honors, and hearing Taps at his funeral hit a cord with Roger. 

He joined Bugles across America and has played Taps for the last 20 years. 

"It's not just in honor of my son; it's in honor of all veterans. I actually sounded Taps at my father's funeral and my uncle's funeral and sound Taps for complete strangers. It's to help bring closure to the families," said Meyer.

A new program called Adopt a Veteran was introduced at the ceremony, where someone can adopt one of the 25 veterans killed in action and laid at Ridgelawn Cemetery to take care of their headstone. You can learn how you can take part here.