Memorial Day crowds honor fallen at Petaluma service

The attendees at Monday’s Memorial Day service at Cypress Hill Memorial Park Cemetery in Petaluma were mostly long gone when John McNees sat down on a low, crumbling concrete wall, finding a patch of shade and a quiet moment to remember fallen comrades.

“I prefer to come here when it’s quiet and I can think and contemplate,” the U.S. Army veteran said.

In the quiet moments, he added, he dwells on the “kind of sacrifice that our country expects of its young people when our survival is at stake.”

Born in Hawaii and raised in Southern California, McNees, 76, was drafted into the United States Army and sent to southeast Asia to join the famed 101st Airborne Division, with whom he served in the Vietnam War from 1968-69.

The battalion he joined had by then suffered heavy casualties, losing 235 men over two years in the war.

“I was assigned there to fill the ranks because they had lost so many men,” McNees said. “We say men, but they were boys. You wonder about the fact that you survived when others didn’t.”

All told, the division suffered more than 20,000 killed or injured during the war, according to a history of the unit. It is the deaths of those men and women and others like them, in other wars, that draws McNees to the hillside cemetery in northern Petaluma every Memorial Day.

He thinks too about the relatives left behind, some of whom he said have approached him on days like today, when he wears his airborne infantry hat. Some of those conversations about lost loved ones have ended in tears, he said.

Earlier in the morning, a crowd of 150 people, including many relatives of the fallen, gathered for the National Anthem, a 21-gun salute from the All Service Rifle Guard of the American Legion Post 28 and a rendition of “Taps” performed by U.S. Coast Guard veteran Rodney Clark.

Speeches from local dignitaries included Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt and Petaluma Mayor Teresa Barrett.

“Most of us will never be in a situation where were asked to risk all for others,” Barrett said. “That is what makes so many of us here today grateful to those who, when they were needed, served and died so that others could go on living.”

Last year, Petaluma did not hold its traditional Memorial Day service because of the pandemic.

This year, masks and social distancing were encouraged. Still, the outdoor event carried on much as it had in years past.

Members of four area Boy Scouts of America troops convened at Cypress Hill Memorial Park at 7:30 on Monday morning to raise and place 109 large flags, some on poles lining the roads through the cemetery and other small flags atop graves in the Veterans’ Section of the park.

Linda Dunlap, who tarried after the ceremony by the grave of a relative slain in the World War II, said it was a relief to see a sizable crowd return to the park as the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

“It’s just a blessing to see that our country is still in good hands and people still care about those who have given their lives,” she said.

“It is a matter of gratitude,” her husband, U.S. Army veteran Shelby Dunlap, added.