Mayor Offers Memorial Day Thoughts

TYLER — Tyler Mayor Barbara Bass keynotes one of the community’s Memorial Day observances, at Rose Lawn Memorial Park. Bass shared some of her thoughts with KTBB.

The mayor remarked, “I think the biggest thing about Memorial Day is just taking the time to remember all of our veterans who have given their lives so that every morning we can wake up to a free country. And I think we can never take that lightly. When you wake up and you don’t have to worry about what your rights are each day, you know that you can come and go as you please, and we still have all of those rights of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to work where we want to, to go to school where we choose — all of those are rights that we should never take for granted. And it’s because we have had a strong military over the years — and we’ve had people who have given their lives, and we have veterans here today who have given of their time and made their commitment that we can have a free country each and every day.

“Recently, we started the Veterans’ Roundtable with the city of Tyler, and we’re looking at improving services to all of our veterans in the area. And in the process of setting that up, we were reminded that the generation now that is in the military — many of those young people have seen nothing but war over the last ten years. And it reminds us once again how important our freedoms are as the United States of America. We must always make sure that we protect those freedoms.”

Also in the Tyler area, Memorial Park Cemetery on Highway 64 West held its annual event. Special guest speakers were Capt. Jim Darwin and FBI Special Agent David Mohr.