The Sedona Area Veteran and Community Outreach organization will be hosting its annual Memorial Day ceremony at the Posse Grounds Pavilion on Monday, May 27. The ceremony will start at 9 a.m. and is anticipated to finish by 9:45 a.m.
“It’s going to be at the Pavilion at Posse Grounds, that’s a big change for us. We’ve been at the Sedona Military Service Park for years,” SAVCO President Jack Ross said. “But we’ve kind of outgrown that with the number of people that come. Because if you get more than 60 people, a lot of people can’t see what’s going on.”
Al Cornell, a retired U.S. Army colonel, is returning as the master of ceremonies, and the invocation will be led by George Ault, followed by a city proclamation read by Mayor Scott Jablow. Flags will be presented to Linda Ward, widow of SAVCO member Mike Ward, a former Sedona city councilman who died May 3, and Marianne Luczak, widow of Ronald G. Luczak, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who died Nov. 18. This year’s keynote speaker will be retired U.S. Navy Capt. Dave Price, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1985 and was a naval aviator before retiring to Sedona.
“The greatest thing for me was getting to lead what we call the post-9/11 generation and I got to be a squadron commander and a wing commander and peaked as a commodore, which is kind of fun, and flew airplanes with young people and served all around the world with our allies,” Price said. “I was kind of an odd one, because I was joint. So I served with every service, including the Coast Guard during the Iraq War, and got to serve with the Army on the ground during the Iraq War, which is kind of [an] unusual thing for a Navy pilot.”
“Every generation questions, ‘Will the next generation be good enough to do what we need them to?’” Price said. “I’ve never had that question because I got to serve with the next generation coming up behind me and they all have what it took.”
“We had no problems meeting our recruiting quotas back then after 9/11,” Price continued. “They all wanted to get involved and get in the service and go serve their country. There was this explosion of patriotism that couple of years right after 9/11. I would always laugh and say, ‘They don’t like the same music that I like and they got tattoos and piercings’ … But I loved them, I would stack them up against any generation … of war fighters … they were just as good at what they did … Those post-9/11 kids signed up knowing they were going into war. I give him all the credit. They might not have been more courageous than any other generation, but they were certainly not less.”
The trumpeter for the occasion will be Julie Gerrish, the vicar at Christ Lutheran Church, taking over from bugler Dean Cathcart, accompanied by Gail Edwards to sing the national anthem and “God Bless America.”
“[Edwards] has appeared on 130 episodes of ABC’s “It’s a Living” as Dot Higgins, Sharon LeMeure in NBC’s ‘Blossom,’ and Vicky Larson in ABC’s ‘Full House,’” her SAVCO biography reads. “In 2001 Gail was inducted into the Coral Gables Hall of Fame and has been happily living in the Sedona area since 2006 with her husband Robert Decker. Gail has supported and participated in several charities, including performing for the Veterans Administration, where she played ukulele that she learned just for this purpose.”
SAVCO will be hosting an open house at the Sedona Elks Lodge at 110 Airport Road on Thursday, June 13, at 6 p.m. The event will showcase some of SAVCO’s other activities throughout the year, such as its golf tournament and the Quilts of Valor Program.
“We’ll have one or two activities to get people involved, like a trivia contest and some other activities like that to get people talking to each other and involved,” Ross said. “Trivia is really basic; it helps give some history on our organization. And so it’s a fun thing that will help educate people, where we are, where we’re going and maybe a couple of door prizes. And involving the other nonprofits, they’ll have an opportunity to express who they are to people that are visiting.”
