Way back, so far back in a crowd of several hundred there was nobody left behind him, stood a guy named Randy Jowers.
The face of a staff sergeant straight out of central casting: lined and rough, skin like leather. Hands scarred, barrel chest. Just back from Afghanistan last year.
Next to him came a guy in a black nylon jacket. Maybe 5 feet 4 inches tall. Name of Bob Elkins. A Navy corpsman in Vietnam whose job was simply “to try and keep the wounded Marines alive,” before a rocket exploded shrapnel and hot steel into Elkins in a place of the body that is called in polite company “my rear end.”
They watched Friday at the unveiling of the veterans memorial at Rock Hill's beautiful Glencairn Garden. A tribute of brick and bronze plaques. Built with some money from the city and plenty of money from the local Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion.
It is now a place to remember what people have to do in wars, which is survive, kill and die.
“What happens in war is bad,” Elkins said. “But we're here talking about it because we went. The honor is for the veterans.”
There were speeches, dedications and the rightful acknowledgement of the scores of veterans in attendance. Each of the service organizations — Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard — had a bronze plaque dedicated with some of the finest men and women who served in those branches seated right in front.
There was a plaque for the prisoners of war and those missing in action, who lost lives for years or forever.
Veterans — some middle-aged, some old — sat up front on a cold morning that didn't seem so cold when the people being honored gave so much for so many.
But out in the crowd, on makeshift bleachers, or sitting in wheelchairs or helped by canes, or standing straight up as dignitaries sat in choice seats near the stage, were the people that veterans garden is really for. Not politicians, not officers with long titles.
The men who gave years of their lives for somebody else.
Those veterans Friday looked like York County and America. Black and white and American Indian and Hispanic and more. Most wore those baseball caps that show branch of service, or what war, or both.
Off to one side stood Johnnie Roseborough, 84, a black man in his veterans ball cap, in the Army during World War II, where he saw enough carnage to last a lifetime.
“I'm proud to be here, proud of this place,” Roseborough said.
In the bleachers among so many veterans sat Lovette Alston, Vietnam veteran, using a cane. He wore a military uniform — one of two Alston brothers from Rock Hill to see combat in Vietnam and somehow survive.
Lovette Alston was enlisted in the military, but Friday as he stood in the sunlight when the Army veterans were asked to stand, he looked like General Patton.
There, off to the other side, was Fred Sanders, 83, of the Catawba Indian Nation, who saw combat in World War II. Drafted out of a cotton mill, went to the other side of the world to save America. Another war hero among dozens.
In front of another set of bleachers in a wheelchair sat 85-year-old James Dixon. Drafted and shot in the head in the Philippines during World War II. Somehow came back and worked all his life, and he sat there as people reached out to thank him for saving the world.
On those bleachers in the front row, Emil Ridzik. Drafted, three years in the Army in World War II.
“This is beautiful,” he said of the veterans memorial. “Great.”
A bunch of guys in uniforms stood in the back. National Guardsmen like Jowers, from the Rock Hill unit. One was Brad Kimbrell. Iraq, Afghanistan, just in the past five years.
Near the end of the ceremony, a man got up and sang “God Bless America.” All those old and not-so-old vets stood around that veterans garden and raised right hands to attention. Jowers, the Afghanistan vet, stood there in that far back. Elkin, the Vietnam vet, stood next to him.
And those two, like so many of those veterans being honored finally with their own place in Rock Hill, started to sing. They were strangers. Yet, they sang together.
“God Bless America, land that I love …” came some of those familiar words. “From the mountains, to the prairie, to the ocean, white with foam.”
The new veterans garden brought Jowers and Elkin together. It brought all these people together to honor those who went and did those things they hated to do in wars. But what each had to do — and did.
Andrew Dys 803-329-4065 adys@heraldonline.com
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