With salutes, brass bands and tears, Grand Strand honors local veterans

Like many other young men at the time, John Lennon deployed to Vietnam to fight in the war between United States and the Southeast Asian country when he was 18.

He was part of the U.S. Air Force’s first major deployment, he said, and witnessed indescribable things. At one point, he was infected with Agent Orange, a plant-killing chemical used as a weapon by the U.S. against the Vietnamese, he said, and has had years of surgeries and cancer treatments to combat the toxic affects.

“I lived every day as hell. I don’t know how to describe it, I don’t talk about a lot,” he said.

“The shirt says it all,” Lennon added, pointing to his t-shirt that read, ‘I grew up in a rough neighborhood,’ referring to his service in the war. “It matured me so much. I’m coming back when I was almost 20 and I was a very mature 20 year-old and after that nobody ever told me to do anything for the rest of my life.”

On Wednesday, Lennon and dozens of other local veterans gathered in the Myrtle Beach Convention Center for the city’s annual Veteran’s Day service, a program that included speeches by local political and spiritual leaders, a brass band blowing military tunes, prayers and remembrances of those who had died while serving. Myrtle Beach Mayor Brenda Bethune and Chief Harold “Buster” Hatcher, leader of the Waccamaw Indian Tribe gave addresses, while the band Festive Brass offered music, like “Taps,” “The Army Goes Rolling Along,” and more. Franklin Rutledge, of the Low Country Veterans Group and Cameron Viebrock, of Temple Emanu-El, offered prayers.

For Lennon, the ceremony was another way that the Grand Strand community makes him feel welcome and accepted as he’s made his retirement home here.

“I’m not going to let you see me cry,” he said, fighting back tears. “The people of Myrtle Beach and the surrounding area give so much respect to old veterans.”

When he goes out in public wearing any kind of paraphernalia from his service, he said, people show him respect.

“I get complimented no matter where I seem to go,” he said. “It’s hard to describe.”

Across the Grand Strand, several veterans spoke before a crowd in Little River before a 21 gun salute and wreath laying ceremony. Event organizers took attendees temperatures at the door before they entered, and everyone wore a face covering inside.

U.S. Rep. Tom Rice was scheduled to speak at the event but was unable to attend. Instead, Chief Master Sgt. Christopher N. Vandenberg spoke to the crowd inside, followed by Vietnam veteran Clebe McClary. William Jagoe, a 100-year-old World War II Navy Veteran of aircraft carriers in the Pacific theater also attended the ceremony, greeting fellow veterans in the portico.

At the Myrtle Beach ceremony, Bethune said that veterans should be shown respect every day of the year, not just on Veteran’s Day.

“You unselfishly left your families, your homes and your every day lives to serve our great nation and to protect our freedoms,” she said.

Speaking for the first time at a Veteran’s Day event, Hatcher, a U.S. Army veteran who served for 20 years, including service in Vietnam with the 82nd Airborne Division, spoke on the horrors of war, and how the traumatic events soldiers experience can stick with them. He said the way war is portrayed in films and on television isn’t accurate.

“In my experience, whenever a person, whether friend or foe, gets shot, unless its in the head or in the heart, they cry. They squirm. They quiver,” he said. “For me most times, it was a relief to see them take their last breath. It was a relief to not hear any more of the moaning. These memories don’t die with the battle. We take them with us. We learn to deal with them. We learn to bury them. We might wonder sometimes though if we made a horrid mistake.”

He added: “Sometimes late at night the visions creep back into your brain. We feel justified by what we did, but we can’t forget it.”

Hatcher, who’s earned nearly two dozen medals for his service, including a Purple Heart and Bronze Star of Valor, said those who serve and have served in the military deserve respect and honor, as well as police officers, fire fighters and EMS workers.

Hatcher was elected as Chief of the Waccamaw Indian Tribe in 1992 and has served in that role since. As part of his efforts to fight for the rights of Native Americans, he also serves as Chairman of the South Carolina Indian Affairs Commission.

He said both he and those who have served have a lot to be proud of, and that he hopes for a world of peace, and not war.

“No job is safe and all of them are necessary. It takes a country to stand up against oppression. I hope that America stands for the oppressed, and never becomes the oppressor,” he said.

Viebrock, offering a Jewish prayer to the veterans, echoed Hatcher’s call for peace. Veterans and those who are currently serving in the military deserve honor for their sacrifice and service, he said, but people should remember that “peace is the foundation of justice.”

“Help us resolve in our hearts, in our homes in our lives and in our hopes for our nation to beat our swords into plowshares, and be committed in all we do not to make war anymore,” he prayed.

At the end of his speech, Hatcher joked that world peace could be as simple as one law.

“If the world ever made an international law that the first two people to die in a war had to be the two leaders of the country going to war,” he said, “We’d have instant world peace.”

This story was originally published November 11, 2020 at 3:04 PM.