Alamance County Memorial Day ceremony moves indoors, honors fallen veterans

Two empty chairs in the front row gave Alamance County’s Memorial Day observance its deepest ache Monday, honoring Diane Sellars and Sue Herring, two committee members whose work helped keep the county’s remembrance tradition intact. Herring died March 29 at age 77, after years on the Alamance County War Memorial Committee and 14 years with the Alamance County Board of Elections, and her absence was felt in the Judge J.B. Allen, Jr. Courthouse as clearly as the weather that pushed the ceremony inside again.

Rain threats forced the annual program off the courthouse lawn and into the courthouse for the fourth straight year, a reminder that the county’s tribute to its war dead has had to adapt without losing its meaning. Recorded music replaced the Western High marching band after a scheduling conflict, and veteran Marines stepped in when the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office color guard did not appear. Even with those changes, the room was full, with Sheriff Terry Johnson, at least two state legislators and three county commissioners among those present, along with Jeff McNeill, the new head of Alamance County’s Veterans Service Office.

The ceremony’s center remained the roll call. This year, 263 former service members were named, a solemn accounting of the county’s losses over the past year. Wreaths were presented by local veterans’ organizations before the reading, and the list of names gave the observance its strongest sense of urgency, especially after last year’s roll call included 288 names. The ceremony’s repeated count of the dead has become one of the county’s most direct public records of sacrifice.

The observance closed with Taps and the bell-ringing tribute led by Randy Loy. That ritual still points back to the county’s war memorial on the courthouse lawn in Graham, the granite structure erected in 1992 to honor Alamance County residents killed in U.S. armed conflicts, from the Civil War through later wars in the Middle East. It also reflects the work now centered at 201 W. Elm St. in Graham, where Alamance County Veterans Service says it advises, educates, assists and supports veterans and their families in seeking state and federal benefits. In a rainy courthouse room, the county again showed how it keeps faith with the dead by supporting the living who remember them.