Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 28, 1994 TAG: 9405310166
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ERIKA BOLSTAD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On the veterans' graves, small American flags flap in the cool wind. Women from the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1264 Auxiliary wind around the gravestones, stopping to mark each veteran's grave with an American flag.
These women, along with members of the Builders Club of James Madison Middle School, spent the sunny afternoon placing flags throughout the cemetery.
Jim Lane, whose whole family is buried at Evergreen, stopped there Friday afternoon to pay his respects to his father, World War II veteran Samuel Lane.
Lane was driving by with his daughter, Lydia Thomason, 8, when he decided to point out her grandfather's grave.
``I told her, `We'll go see Poppy's grave.'''
Lane wanted to tell his daughter about the importance of family.
``All of my people are gone, except my two brothers,'' Lane said.
Memorial Day is also full of memories for Dorothy Brown and her friend Mary Anna Page, who were at the cemetery to honor friends and family.
Brown was putting flowers and flags on the graves of her husband and her stepson. Her husband, Melvin Brown, was a veteran of Pearl Harbor. Her stepson was a pilot killed on a secret mission in 1979.
Page, a physical therapy assistant at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Salem, met Brown when Brown's husband was a patient there.
Other families, seen throughout the cemetery, gathered around the graves of loved ones, honoring them with flowers and reflective thoughts before Memorial Day.
by CNB