The American Flag and the American Legion Flag fluttered in a gentle breeze as former Vietnam War POW David Harker told the nearly 200 people at Monday’s Memorial Day Service in Buchanan they were there to remember the people like his fellow soldiers and Buchanan’s John Edwin Hill who had died in war for America.
Harker was the guest speaker at American Legion Post 93’s 61st Memorial Day Service at Fairview Cemetery. He recounted some of the men he’d served with and was in prisoner of war camps with for five years in Vietnam.
He also talked about Hill, the only known Buchanan resident to die in Vietnam. Hill was killed 40 years ago on April 7. Around the cemetery, some 350 graves were marked with small American Flags in tribute to the military veterans buried there.
Post 93 also remembered three members who died in the past year—World War II veterans Dr. Guy Alphin and C.T. Kennedy and Korean War veteran Connie Sparrow.