Remembering the Fallen
at Sgt. Mitchell W. Stout Medal of Honor Memorial & Pleasant Forest Cemetery
Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Marine Corps League Detachment No. 924 held its annual Memorial Day service, from 11 a.m. to noon, at Sgt. Mitchell W. Stout Medal of Honor Memorial at Virtue Cemetery, along Evans Road in Farragut, Monday, May 29.
Retired U.S. Navy Chief David Cates, 924 Judge Advocate, led the ceremony. He read the history of how Memorial Day became a federal holiday, then detailed the heroic actions of Bonnyman and Stout, both sacrificing their own lives to save the men around them in combat. Cates then presented a wreath at the Detachment’s Vietnam Memorial monument. Eric P. Nash, former United States Marine Corps sergeant and 924 Adjutant, played Taps with flags at half-staff. Detachment’s Honor Guard fired a salute in honor of fallen heroes in combat.
On Memorial Day weekend every year, United States flags are places beside veterans’ graves in Pleasant Forest Cemetery off Concord Road in Farragut. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts annually assist Pleasant Forest Cemetery Board of Directors in placing the flags. Boy Scout Troop 30 and Girl Scout Troop 20169 assisted in this year’s salute, Saturday, May 27, to fallen and deceased veterans from all wars and conflicts from the American Revolutionary War through the Vietnam Conflict.
For more photos from these events, please see Westside Faces in our print edition.
