Hundreds of community members and performances by the Gold Coast Pipe Band, the Santa Barbara Choral Society and the Prime Time Band filled the Santa Barbara Cemetery on Friday morning to honor former and active military members for Veterans Day.
The annual ceremony — one of several events that took place across Santa Barbara County — was presented by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1649 and the Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Foundation. It included presentations by UC Santa Barbara’s ROTC Color Guard, local guest speakers and a flyover by the Condor Squadron.
“The Santa Barbara Cemetery is over 150 years old,” said keynote speaker Phil Conran, a retired Air Force colonel. “There are over 5,000 veterans buried in this cemetery, and I think we can say, particularly on Veterans Day, that this is the Santa Barbara national veterans cemetery for California. It is truly amazing what they have here.”
Conran also acknowledged those currently serving in the military and their struggles and challenges.
“I think we should think about the warriors that are presently serving our country. For the past 30 years, they have gone to places that most of us have never even heard of,” Conran said. “There is a problem with going back and forth, back and forth — from civilian peacetime living to wartime conditions — and I think it’s wearing on the minds of our young veterans. They are going back and forth three, four, five, six, seven times and we have 20 suicides a day [in military members].
“I think if there’s anything that we can do to help them besides saying, ‘Thank you for your service’ — that’s not good enough. That’s not good enough at all. So, let’s just think about that in the coming weeks and see if we can do something to support these young warriors that we have on active duty and warriors that are retired or honored disservice for the past 30 years.”
During the ceremony, Master of Ceremonies Lt. John Blankenship, who is also the founding director of the Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Foundation, recognized local military members from all branches and those who were in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan and more.
The ceremony closed out with a performance of “Taps” by bugler Howard Hudson.
“Let us be the rainbow for those veterans who are still living in the clouds,” Conran said at the end of his keynote speech.
— Noozhawk staff writer Serena Guentz can be reached at sguentz@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.