Tyler

By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer

It was 1968 when Robert E. Lee High School first dedicated a memorial to students who died while serving their country in war — 40 years later, Lee students showed they had not forgotten the sacrifices of eight alumni.

Students and faculty, as well as alumni from 1968, gathered in the courtyard of the school Tuesday for a memorial service and to mark the service’s 40th anniversary.

“It’s hard for me to believe that this is 2008. … We’re about to have our 40th reunion,” said Brian Ballard, who was the Student Council president in 1968. During those reunions they often remember those classmates “not with us anymore,” he said.

“That’s what makes this memorial so special. It’s right here in the center of campus,” Ballard said. “It’s not just here to honor these men — but it’s here to make sure that we never forget them.”

In 1966, Lee Student Council President David Muntz initiated the project to build a memorial in the center of the Lee courtyard to honor former students who died serving their country, according to TISD. The project was completed in 1968.

Ballard said it took a lot of work to make it happen, including knocking on doors to ask for donations. More than $3,000 was raised.

“People just really came through for us,” he said. “We were able to get the money we needed for the memorial.”

At the first service, four names were on the memorial.

Since then, four more names have been added. Officials said all died in the Vietnam War.

“Today we’re here to rededicate this memorial and honor the names of not four but eight heroes, former students of Robert E. Lee,” Ballard said Tuesday. “I want you to remember their names.”

He urged students to stop and look at the memorial, read the names, even write the names down in their yearbooks.

“Make note of how many names are on the monument today, who they are, and come back in a few years and see if there are any more names there,” he said. “What this memorial stands for is the fact that we can never, ever forget these heroes and what they’ve done for us.”

Bill Bowers, a 1968 Lee graduate who is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, also spoke to students, taking them back to what was happening in 1968.

The country was three years into the Vietnam War, he said, “still locked in a deadly struggle” in which thousands had died.

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, then shortly after Lee’s graduation in 1968, Robert Kennedy was also gunned down.

“How this nation weathered those cataclysmic events astounds me still today …,” Bowers said. “With the U.S. now engaged in protracted combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, the class of 2008 and the other classes represented here today will leave here to go face challenges at an uncertain time not unlike those we faced 40 years ago.”

Bowers reminded students that the eight Lee alumni who died while serving, “walked these same sidewalks, attended class in these same classrooms — they shared the same hopes and dreams that many of you have here today.

“But these honored eight, they gave up their tomorrows so we could have ours to search for our dreams. Only if we allow it can these men become only names carved in stone, just footnotes in our history.”

Bowers encouraged students to pause when they pass the monuments at the center of the courtyard.

“Read their names — better yet, speak their names. In so doing, you honor them and their sacrifice,” he said. “You’ll honor their memory and they do not become marginalized as just names on a stone, or worse yet, forgotten.”

Ballard said after the ceremony that Tuesday’s event was emotional for him.

“To be able to challenge the students to look at (the memorial), look at the names, not to forget — that’s the main thing,” he said. “These are eight heroes that we can’t ever forget.”

The former Lee students whose names are etched on the monuments are:

SALUTING THE FALLEN: Robert E. Lee High School students recite the Pledge of Allegiance during the Dedication and Service at the memorial students built at Lee to honor alumni who have died in combat.
(Staff Photo By Jaime R. Carrero)