Memorial Service held at Welcome Center

BY HELEN B. FOSTER, Correspondent

Those attending the Annual Great Bend  Welcome Center Memorial Day ceremony heard Commissioner MaryAnn Warren read the names of those honored by the memorial dedicated to their memory.

SFC George Anthony Pugliese; Staff Sgt. Daniel Laverne Arnold; Sgt Eric Wentworth Slebodnik; Spec. Lee Allen Wiegane; Spec Oliver J. Brown and Spec. William Lee Evans. These citizen soldiers from Bravo Company, 109th Infantry of the Pennsylvania National Guard all lost their lives fighting for America’s freedom and as the memorial says, “They will always be remembered as Heroes.”

Warren noted, “When Congress made the day into a three-day weekend with the National Holiday Act of 1971, it made it all the easier for us to be distracted from the spirit and meaning of the day,” she said.

She said those attending parents needed to teach their children the day’s meaning and show others by our actions that we will not forget.

Quoting from President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address in 1865, Warren said,”we need to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.”

It is our response to Abraham Lincoln’s charge upon which we will shall, as a nation, be judged, she added.

She concluded by saying, please thank a veteran today, as we walk with freedoms that some do not have. Everyone should ask that God Bless our Troops; God Bless Susquehanna County and God Bless America.

Al Aronowitz from New Milford was credited with arranging the annual ceremony and he asked Bruce Paskoff to be the Master of Ceremonies. Susquehanna County Director of Veteran’s Affairs Thomas Yadlosky laid a wreath at the memorial and Pastor Gary Haskell of the Jackson Baptist Church offered the prayer.

It was noted that the Great Bend Welcome Center is the only one in Pennsylvania given permission to erect a memorial for those who made the supreme sacrifice.