Murphy – “All vets who served have survivor’s guilt. I just try to make a little sense of it, if possible, and not forget what they have given.”
Those words were spoken by George Bendzen of the U.S. Marine Corps League, Cherokee Detachment 1011 in Marble, during the wreath ceremony Monday morning in Konehete Park. The granite wreath presentation galvanized several community groups and local businesses.
“Interstate Welding made this stand for the wreath,” Bendzen said, “and Murphy Granite donated the granite for the wreath.” Chaplain J.D. Baker wrote the inscription: “Memorial for those who fought and died for the United States of America, God bless them all,” which S&P Monuments then engraved.
Western North Carolina Pacesetters laid 19 new memorial bricks around the flag posts, and Marine Detachment 1011 organized the Memorial Day event.
Gwen Hathaway attended to honor her husband, Cpl. Roger Hathaway, who served in Vietnam from 1968-69.
“It was a tough war on all of them,” she said, sitting on the bench memorializing her late husband. “He died of the cancer he got from Agent Orange.”
Hathaway met and married Roger about six months after he returned from Vietnam. However, she said it was decades later when she really got to know him.
“He started the 3rd Recon reunion; we meet every other year,” she said. The group’s numbers swelled to 1,500 before her husband died.
“I found out more about my husband at those reunions,” she said, adding that “he was a whole different person afterward. They laughed; they cried, they drank.
“They got a lot off their chests.”
Judge Advocate Harry Schweitzer also served in Vietnam.
“May of 1977 was a particularly bad month there, lots of causalities,” he said. Schweitzer came to the ceremony because he said all veterans should be there.
When considering what civilians can do better to honor the lost soldiers, he became reticent. “That’s a question people need to ask themselves,” he said.
Bendzen answers that question for himself.
“There should be more than roads, bridges and parks named after them,” he said. “We’ve got to remember what it took for the value of freedom.”
Bendzen revealed that after all the public ceremonies on Memorial Day, he honors his lost brothers in a more intimate way. “I have a couple of drinks and think of friends who are gone, those who paid the ultimate price,” he said somberly.
Bob Lewis Jr., vice commandant, started the Konehete Park memorial in 2014.
“When I came here, it was all blank. I went to the commissioners to get the OK [to build the memorial],” adding that the Marine Corps League as well as the Cherokee County Parks & Recreation Department donated time and money to make it happen.
Lewis said he was motivated because “nobody else would do it.” As the crowd gathered under a rising sun, Baker added that, “We have PTSD, most of us here. It makes for a very sad and solemn day.”