Memorial Day is about remembering and the town of Gallatin honored their fallen at the Sumner County Veterans Memorial.

Shivonne Foster, DI Multimedia Scholar

It wasn’t wartime combat that claimed the life of Ann Swaim’s husband. A staph infection and bladder cancer took the life of gun master F.E. Swaim years after he served in one year in the Army and 20 in the Navy.
Swaim spoke proudly today of her husband of 16 years, saying, “He cared about people, and that’s what the military is all about.”
Accompanied by Lynne Seagraves and Viola Jeffers, whose husbands are deceased veterans, Swaim attended the Memorial Day observance at the Sumner County Veterans Memorial in Gallatin. They sat with a crowd of veterans and family members amid U.S. and military flags, a few at half staff and many flapping in a stiff breeze.
Memorial attendee, Randall Mays, an Army veteran who said he served four years, six months and 29 days in combat, beginning in 1963, volunteered to return to service five times during the Vietnam War. “I felt like it was going to take numbers of people to make a difference,” he said. “I’d do anything to save lives.”
The 64-year-old said the names of 57 men he served with are among the 58,195 inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
“I wish our government had taken a different political stance,” Mays said. “But regardless, that doesn’t reflect badly on the troops. We went with the intent to do a job.”
According to Mays, the nation still has work to do militarily and “must stomp the living hell out of the next country that attacks us.”
Mays was one of a throng of Rolling Thunder members who gathered throughout the nation on the holiday to remember fellow veterans, to support men and women now serving and to advocate for further searches for prisoners of war.
Dave Peterson, 59, who said he served in Thailand during the Vietnam War, hopes that politicians take notice of Rolling Thunder, an organization of motorcyclists. “We’re not politicians,” he said. “We just want somebody to hear us. I think they heard us. There’s over half a million people in Washington, D.C., this weekend.”
Today, members of Rolling Thunder met with their newest member, President Bush, at the White House.