Veteran supporters throughout the city remembered the fallen troops this Memorial Day.
"This is where Memorial Day came alive in my five-year-old mind," veteran Jessie Hillis said. "I remember getting up early to place the American flag at each veteran's resting place."
There are more than 5,000 of those marked resting places within the Resthaven Funeral Home and Cemetery alone.
"Dad's response was, 'These people have given their life for the freedoms we have in this country,'" Hillis said. "The freedom stuck out in my mind like a sore thumb, 'Does that mean it was free?' 'No, it was bought and paid for by the blood of our American soldiers.'"
"There's a reason you can pray in this country and it's thanks to those brave men and women," veteran Benino Guerrero Jr. said.
"The community support makes me feel real good and not only me but the people that acknowledge us and the men and women that passed," veteran Lionel Lucero said.
"To this day the bugling of taps makes me weep for the soldiers that had the courage to fight and keep fighting for our beautiful red, white and blue," Hillis said.
