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Memorial Day: Four Generations of Veterans for Lowell Family

Posted at 7:38 PM, May 26, 2014
and last updated 2014-05-26 23:55:21-04

LOWELL, Mich. (May 26, 2014) — Students from Lowell High School played at Oakwood Cemetery where more than 600 veterans are buried.

It was a full morning for Memorial Day commemorations, beginning with a parade through downtown Lowell.

“We recognized all the troops out there that have laid their lives down for this country that has provided with this wonderful country for us freedom,” Maxwell Majinska, a boy scout said.

Herman Weststrate, Lowell VFW Commander said, “I do this every year in remembrance of those who have fought on, the ones who didn’t make it back.”

Weststrate is the parade director. He marched in the parade himself as part of the color guard.

“I was in Vietnam in 1968,” he said

Defending freedom is in his blood. He’s part of a family lineage of American heroes.

“[There are] not very many ‘four generations’ alive. Cause there’s got to be an old guy around,” he chuckled.

Four generations of Weststrate Army veterans were joined by hundreds of others at the cemetery.

They honored veterans who have passed on and those who lost their lives fighting for our country.

During the ceremony, a Civil War canon was also rededicated. It sits in front of the Civil War statue that was erected in 1900. The naval canon was shipped south for restoration.

Weststrate said, “We, us Vietnam veterans, were treated differently when we came home. We don’t want that to ever happen again.”