Remember the nation's war dead, support monument effort this Memorial Day

I had the pleasure of sitting down with two of my personal heroes Wednesday of last week when I had lunch with World War II combat veterans George Thomas Jones and Stan Richardson.

Richardson, who lives with his wife, Chat, in New Site, is the author of “Growing Up in a Foxhole, 1944-1946: A Foot Soldier Looks Back,” a 2005 book that is the best personal account of WWII that I’ve ever read.

Jones, a retired businessman who lives in Monroeville, is a long-running, award-winning columnist for The Monroe Journal newspaper. He also happens to be my former next-door neighbor.

Jones, 89, and Richardson, 86, were soldiers in the U.S. Army and fought in Europe during World War II. During our visit last week at the McDonald’s restaurant off Exit 96, both men told stories of their experiences during the worst parts of the war. They both described numerous near misses with death, and said they owed their survival to a combination of common sense, good luck, blind chance and God’s divine will.

“I didn’t have one guardian angel looking out for me,” Jones said. “I had about 20!”

Coming less than two weeks before Memorial Day, this got me to thinking about all the GIs who didn’t make it home, including many service members from Conecuh County. When I think about war casualties from this area, I can’t help but think of men like the late Guy Dawson Booker.

Booker was lost in action while serving as a member of the 84-man crew of the U.S. Submarine Growler, which was sunk by Japanese vessels west of the Philippines on Nov. 8, 1944. Experts believe that enemy depth charges sank the Growler, and the sub’s wreckage has never been found.

Booker was typical of our war dead. He made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation and more than deserves to be remembered. With that in mind, with Memorial Day just around the corner, I encourage each of you to support the ongoing effort to have a memorial to the county’s war dead constructed in Evergreen.

The local Disabled American Veterans chapter is leading the effort to have the memorial built, and we should do everything we can to help them. Evergreen City Councilman and Vietnam War combat veteran Luther Upton is the spokesman for the group.

“This is a monumental undertaking for such a small group of disabled veterans,” Upton said. “We need your help. This will be a lasting tribute to those who died and to those who served. Won’t you help us out? Everyone pays lip service to honoring our veterans, but how many actually do anything about it?”

To find out how to help, see the full story elsewhere in this week’s paper.

In the end, Memorial Day is Monday, so take the time to remember all the men and women who have paid the ultimate price to protect all the freedoms we have today. We do live in the greatest country in the world and in the history of the world, and we owe it all to the men and women in the armed forces.

Also take the time to thank our living veterans - men like Jones, Richardson and Upton - because when it’s all said and done, there’s no way that we can really thank them enough.