Memorial Day observers mindful of past, current conflicts

Posted 4:13PM on Monday 27th May 2002 ( 23 years ago )

ROSWELL - Georgians across the state packed parks, sang patriotic songs and remembered soldiers lost to war in the first Memorial Day holiday since the September Eleventh terrorist attacks. Thousands of people turned out for the fifth annual ``Roswell Remembers,'' billed by organizers as the state's largest Memorial Day event. Event staff estimated the attendance to be from seven-thousand to nine-thousand people, far exceeding previous crowds. Guest speaker General Paul Tibbetts, pilot of the plane that dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, said Americans should remember the soldiers overseas fighting the war on terrorism and encourage them with e-mails and letters. The 89-year-old Tibbetts told the crowd, ``Our future now rests in the hands of those people who are over in Afghanistan and that area. It's going to be a long, hard fight. A lot of them are going to get killed. We're fighting an enemy unlike any we've ever fought before.'' A bagpipes and drums corps marched into the ceremony playing ``God Bless America,'' a plaintive reminder of the song that became the nation's anthem on the steps of the Capitol, at ballparks and around the country following the attacks. In Athens, actors portrayed military conflicts that no living person remembers -- battles dating all the way back to the Roman Empire. About 50 re-enactors depicted military techniques throughout history, from the Romans to the Norman Conquest knights and on up through the Civil War and the two world wars. A more traditional event took place in Savannah, where about 40 members of the American Legion Auxiliary rode four miles out to sea to drop an anchor made of ten-thousand red poppies. The dropping of the poppy anchor dates back to 1919, when an Athens woman adopted the poppy as a tribute to fallen soldiers and dropped the first anchor off the Savannah coast.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/5/194221