Bernard Melekian, a retired chief petty officer with the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, still remembers the day he had to say goodbye to his family at Los Angeles International Airport to serve in Saudi Arabia.
It was late 1990. The then-42-year-old was notified that he was being called to active duty for Operation Desert Storm, and he recalled not knowing when he’d come back to his family.
Melekian shared his story and honored the stories of other veterans like him during the annual Veterans Day ceremony hosted by Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1649 and the Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Foundation at the Santa Barbara Cemetery on Wednesday.
Not even the hot sun deterred a large crowd from gathering at 11 a.m. at the cemetery’s flagpole, lowered to half-staff.
“This year, as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, we reflect with gratitude on generations of veterans whose courage, sacrifice and dedication have helped safeguard our country and our ideals,” said Pablo Paredes with the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1649 and a retired U.S. Army member.
The annual ceremony also included speeches and multiple performances by the Gold Coast Pipe Band, the Prime Time Band and the Santa Barbara Choral Society, as well as a white dove release.
Melekian said people often think of veterans as fresh college and high school graduates, but there’s a third group he recognized on Wednesday: reservists and National Guard members.
“My focus on this Veterans Day has been to tell you about those men and women who serve in the reserve,” Melekian said. “They live ordinary lives, raise families, go about their business until their country calls.”
Military reserves are trained service members who are ready to reinforce active-duty troops during war, national emergencies or other military needs.
The members train one weekend a month and about two weeks a year, training for the day “they might be called up,” Melekian said.
“When these deployments happen, the lives of reservists and lives of their families are disrupted,” he added.
Before being deployed to Saudi Arabia, Melekian served in the U.S. Army as a sergeant from 1967 to 1970 and afterward pursued a 50-year career in law enforcement.
After he was discharged in 1970, Melekian “assumed he was finished with the military” and joined the Santa Monica Police Department.
He had joined the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve in 1984, about six years before he was called to active service in Saudi Arabia.
“I had not expected this to happen,” he said.
That operation was “over so quickly that most people have forgotten that the United States deployed 25,000 body bags to Saudi Arabia and were told that the expectation was that we would be deployed for a minimum of two years,” he said.
Melekian served for eight months.
During his time, he said the biggest concern was the thick layer of oil smoke that lay over the base after Iraq President Saddam Hussein set oil wells on fire.
The ceremony also honored retired Brig. Gen. Frederick Lopez of the U.S. Marine Corps, the second Hispanic general in the history of the Marine Corps.
Lopez is a Vietnam War combat veteran and a computer programmer and test engineer for McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Co. He retired in July 1998 from the Marine Corps.
The annual ceremony ended with the highly anticipated flyover by the San Diego Salute.
Wednesday’s ceremony was one of a handful across the county. In Santa Maria, community members honored veterans in the city and across the country at the Freedom Monument Veterans Memorial.
