Recently one of the few remaining veterans of the last World War in Lake County answered his “final roll call.” Rocky Hockenhull was honored in a memorial service at Veterans Circle in Hartley Cemetery on Saturday, January 17.
The World War II generation accepted the torch of freedom handed to them with love and pride and that torch was protected by all those who served in the military. From 1941 to 1945, sixteen million men and women wore the uniform of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. Millions of them stared death in the face in places like Anzio, Bataan, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Omaha Beach; in the skies over Japan, France and Germany and on all of the seven seas. Foreign soil and the great deep became the final resting place for more than 400,000 of them.
Most people today don’t realize that these heroes are passing from the scene at a rate exceeding 1,000 per day nationwide. If you know any World War II veterans, please take a moment to say thank you to them for their service in the cause of freedom.
We must remember that freedom is never free. It is because these brave men and women, as well as the millions following in their footsteps, left all behind to serve their beloved country that we can live in a time and place where freedom is taken for granted.
May God continue to bless America.
Herman W. Hughes, Ph.D. is a retired captain in the U.S. Navy and the chaplain for the Lake County Funeral Honors Team.
