Veterans remembered at Mill Springs Memorial Day Service

May 30—While there have been changes in our lives over the past couple of years, on a local level and on a national scale, the basic function of the Mill Springs National Cemetery remains the same: To offer a final resting place for men and women who have served our country.

It's true that the park at Mill Springs — including the battlefield and the museum — have come under the protection of the National Park Service. It is also true that a global pandemic caused the cancellation of last year's Memorial Day Service at the national cemetery.

But despite those differences in circumstance, this year's Memorial Day Service was as large and as emotional as ever.

The event's emcee, Mill Springs National Monument Superintendent Dawn Davis, said she was excited to participate, not only because it was the first Memorial Day ceremony performed with Mill Springs Battlefield as a National Park, but also because it was the first Memorial Day ceremony she had ever been a part of.

"It is an honor to be a small part of putting this on for families, for veterans, and to remember those who have sacrificed," she said. "It was very moving. I was not expecting to be able to do something like this."

Members of the group in charge of the event in the past, the Mill Springs Battlefield Association, wanted to do something to honor the holiday this year, and Davis said she happily let those staff members take the lead.

The National Park Service brought what it could to the table, she said, and with help from other neighboring national parks, American Legion Post 38 and others, the collaborative effort meant the service came together without a hitch.

It helped, of course, that a large crowd came out to witness the events.

"To see what this [service] means to the community, to start having it again, is powerful," Davis said.

The importance of the ceremony to the community was also noted by main speaker Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Dean Collins.

Collins paraphrased a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt, saying, "Those who have long enjoyed such privileges and freedoms as we enjoy sometime tend to forget that men and women have sacrificed and died to win those privileges and freedoms.

"Your attendance here this morning shows that you have not forgotten," Collins said. "You continue to remember those who have served the country well. Your attendance here today speaks very well for our nation, our state and our local communities."

During his invocation, American Legion Post 38 Chaplin Clarence Floyd thanked God for the privilege of being at such a ceremony.

"We know that freedom comes with a price when we think of all of the sacrifices [that have] been made, when we look across all of these white monuments, and we realize the each one of them represents a family," Floyd said.

Collins went a step further, noting that the markers within the cemetery represent each man and woman buried there, not only the veterans themselves, but their spouses, some whose names are also engraved in the stones and who are also buried there.

Those head stones represent the sacrifices of the veterans as well as the sacrifices their families made in the name of freedom, he said.

Collins noted that among the veterans buried at Mill Springs is Sgt. Brent Woods, a member of the Buffalo Soldiers in the U.S. Army who fought in the American Indian Wars.

Woods, who lived from 1855 to 1906, is the only Pulaski Countian to have received the Congressional Medal of Honor, and is one of only two African-Americans from Kentucky to have been so honored.

Collins noted the great diversity of the veterans who are buried at Mill Springs.

"Some were men, some were women. Some were Black, some were white, some were other races and other ethnic groups. Some were Democrats, some were Republicans, some were not political at all. Some were old, some were young. Some were married, some were single. Some were very well educated, others had little or no formal education. Some were wealthy, some were poor. Some served in times of peace, and some in times of war."

Those monuments record the lives of veterans who served in different wars, in different parts of the world, in different branches, and with different ranks, he reminded the crowd.

But each one, he said, served their country.