BOBBY ARDOIN Editor/Consulting Writer
Members of five St. Landry Parish Gold Star families were recognized on Monday during an emotional Memorial Day ceremony held at the Yambilee Building.
Representatives from each of the families were presented with engraved crosses at the conclusion of the annual program hosted by members of the parish Veterans Memorial Committee.
The program moved later to the St. Landry Parish Veterans Memorial on La. 182 were members of the St. Landry Veterans Funeral Honor Guard provided a program-ending 21-gun salute and the traditional playing of taps.
Gold Star families represented the U.S. Army staff sergeant Craig Davis, Army staff sergeant Jonathan Reed, Army staff sergeant Jarred Fontenot, Army sergeant Joseph A. Richard III and U.S. Marine lance corporal Myles Cody Sebastien.
All five soldiers were declared killed in action from 2004 until 2008.
The solemn Yambilee Building ceremony also included ceremonial tributes to those either killed or missing in action in all foreign wars dating from 1914 until the conclusion of the Iraq and Afghanistan war.
Names of parish soldiers who have been prisoners of war, missing in action and killed in action had their names called as part of an annual roll call that spanned two centuries of military action.
Pat Mason-Guilllory, project director of the St. Landry Parish Veterans Memorial, presided as mistress of ceremonies both at the Yambilee Building and the Veterans Memorial.
Mason Guillory acknowledged that some persons annually choose to remember Memorial Day at events such as bar-b-ques.
However Mason-Guillory added that Memorial Day is also a commemorative occasion where it should be considered more appropriate to celebrate those who gave their lives serving the United States.
State Representative Dustin Miller told the audience that the ceremony embodied an occasion where individuals from St. Landry who laid their lives on the line were being honored.
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