Fallen service members honored at Memorial Day service

With clouds overhead, a chill in the air and flags fluttering in the wind, community members gathered around the Veterans Circle at Mount Rose Memorial Park to observe Memorial Day on Monday.
Holman-Howe Funeral Home put on the annual event with help from the local Civil Air Patrol and Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter. Dana Alexander sang for the ceremony, and Reverend Marsha Vincent gave the invocation. State representatives Melissa Schmidt and Jeff Knight also participated in the event.
In a central moment, organizer Taylor Howe told the story of how a new grave marker found its home in the Memorial Park. After receiving a veteran’s hat, Don Anderson Sr. went on a journey to learn more about John Glen Spencer, a Navy sailor lost at sea during World War II.
Spencer’s descendant, his niece Lenyce Rogers, and Anderson worked with Holman-Howe to place a permanent memorial marker for Spencer in Mount Rose. Howe announced the dedication of Spencer’s marker as well as the dedication of the space for warriors lost and those who work to remember them.
For the representative’s parts, Schmidt had led the gathering in the Pledge of Allegiance, and Knight spoke on the community’s efforts to honor its veterans that day. Quoting John F. Kennedy Jr.’s statement on living one’s words being the highest form of appreciation, Knight encouraged those present to do so.
“Let’s support our veterans and build a community that reflects the love they showed us. Those sacrifices, those unfillable holes in the hearts of their loved ones are what give us the freedom and what give us the ability to gather here today,” Knight said.

After Knight’s speech, Laclede County Sheriff Matt Frederick later presented a wreath in honor of deceased veterans as the VFW honor guard gave tribute.
As the ceremony closed, organizer Kenneth Howe thanked those in attendance as well as those who helped with the ceremony, thinking back over the event’s twenty-year history.
“It is a great testimony to our community that we were able to do this,” Howe said on the annual observance.
After the ceremony, Don Anderson Jr. and his father described the long journey of learning about Spencer and then finding a home for the memorial marker in Mt. Rose in the space that Holman-Howe provided.
Spencer was lost at sea while serving aboard the USS Smith during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. A Japanese torpedo plane crashed into the destroyer in 1942’s Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, according to the U.S. Naval Institute’s website.
The Naval Institute noted that while the ship itself survived the battle, an officer had led a group of crewmen to abandon ship following the plane’s crash into the ship. These sailors were never found.
Responding to the Record’s question of what Rogers would like readers to know about Spencer, she said that in her uncle’s letters to her mother, he always asked her to give his niece a hug.