Filling the lawn of the Hillsdale County Courthouse are 108 white crosses commemorating Hillsdale County veterans who died in combat zones.
The crosses, which are cut from southern yellow pine, are the result of nearly a year’s worth of work by the Hillsdale Exchange Club, a community service organization in town. The Kiwanis Club also set up crosses and flags downtown as symbols of patriotism honoring the veterans of Hillsdale County and America’s armed forces.
“It behooves us to show our respects to those who have served,” said Ken Bente, Hillsdale County’s director of veterans affairs. Bente himself is a veteran of the Vietnam War.
Jeff Francis, the Exchange Club’s director for the project, got the idea when he saw similar crosses in the South nearly two years ago. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, the project means a lot to Francis.
“Sometimes, I get a little tear in my eye when I see them,” Francis said. “I lost friends overseas.”
One of the crosses bears the name of William Palmer, a friend of Francis who died crossing the Iraq-Kuwait border.
Veteran Renae Shircliff, deputy director of Veterans Affairs for the county, organized a Veterans Day service Tuesday at 11 a.m., in which several community leaders participated.
State representative Ken Kurtz (R-Mich.) gave the invocation and the benediction; Board of Hillsdale County Commissioners Chairman Mark Wiley gave a short opening speech called “Freedom’s Cost;” the Freedom Farm Christian School band sang the “National Anthem” and “God Bless America;” American Legion Director of VA Gary Easterling sang the keynote speech; and women who lost relatives to war performed the Placement of the Wreaths for WWI, WWII, the Korean and Vietnam wars, Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom, All Wars, a Tribute to Mothers, and POWs, and MIAs.
“War is unpopular. No one disputes that,” Bente said. “But we should still honor those who have taken their lives and put them on the line [for us]. When they come back, they’re never the same.”
Bente spoke Tuesday at his alma mater, Reading High School. He talked to students about his friend and classmate, Donald Bennett, with whom Bente graduated high school in 1965. In 1967, while Bente was attending college, he received a phone call from his mother informing him that Bennett had been killed in rifle fire in the Binh Dinh province of South Vietnam. Not long after that, Bente joined the U.S. Airforce.
“Many of those people never got a chance to get married or have a family. Some of them were just 20 years old,” Bente said. “Think about that. Freedom is not free.”
Bente encouraged residents to attend a memorial service on Veterans Day and thank veterans for their sacrifice.
“You have no idea what that does for a veteran,” he said.
