Remember and honor

“It is said that those of us who serve actually experience three deaths,” Col. Douglas H. Stubbe (U.S. Army, Ret.), the guest speaker at the 2024 Oneida County Memorial Day ceremony, told those gathered in the John and Dori Brown Performing Arts Center Monday morning. The first death is when they physically die, the second is when the final mournful note of “Taps” is played as their remains are laid to rest and the third is “when those of us who are still here stop saying their names.”

“As you go through your day today, honor (the fallen) for the lives they lived and their service by saying their names and telling their stories,” he implored. “Don’t let that third death occur.”

Representatives of local veterans groups place poppies on a cross while the names of Oneida County veterans who have died since May 2023 are read by emcee James Heck.
(Photo by Heather Schaefer/River News)

Fittingly, on display in the RHS Commons, just outside the auditorium, were posters created by students enrolled in the school’s AP U.S. History course. The posters told the stories of Northwoods residents who offered their last full measure of devotion.

Included in the tributes was one of the community’s most recent heroes: Sgt. Ryan Adams.

Like the students in AP U.S. History, Adams once walked the halls of RHS. He gave his life for his country when his Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Logar Province, Afghanistan on Oct. 2, 2009. 

Also recognized was Rhinelander police officer Steve Martin, who voluntarily returned to military service after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and lost his life on July 1, 2004 while trying to protect other soldiers from a car bomb in Mosul, Iraq. Other posters told the stories of people like Frederick Robert Anderson, born on the Fourth of July in 1897 and killed in action in France in World War I.

Another Rhinelander resident, William Albert Gilson, served in both World War II and Korea, where he was killed in action. He graduated from Rhinelander High School in 1943 and is buried in Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

Students in Rhinelander High School’s AP U.S. History class researched the lives of community members who gave their lives in service to their country. The student projects were on display in the RHS Commons on Memorial Day.
(Photo by Heather Schaefer/River News)

According to the poster memorializing his life, Gary Loduha “ran into an impenetrable wall of machine gun fire” to save the wounded during a battle in the A Shau Valley, Vietnam. He saved several buddies before being fatally wounded, according to his Silver Star citation. 

Joseph Belanger was born in Rhinelander on Nov. 12, 1918. He rests forever in the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial, cut down in a German attack the day after Christmas 1944.

Many of the posters included quotes chosen by the students.

The student who profiled Wilhelm S. Hurkmans, chose this Nelson Mandela quote: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

“I picked this quote because it encourages us to embrace our fears and find courage to overcome them just like Wilhelm had to do,” the student wrote.

Also included in the gallery of tributes was Ryan David Jopek, the brother of RHS history teacher and city alderman Steven Jopek (and the son of Lakeland Times news director Brian Jopek) who assigned the poster project. Ryan Jopek died on Aug. 2, 2006, in Tikrit, Iraq, just before he was due to return home.

Two other quotes included on the posters: “Here men endured that a nation might live” (Herbert Hoover) and “Our flag does not fly because the wind moves it. It flies with the last breath of each soldier who died protecting it.” (Unknown).

The ceremony, emceed by RHS student James Heck, also included recitations of “The Gettysburg Address” and “In Flanders Fields” as well as the Armed Forces medley and the last roll call of Oneida County veterans who have died since May 2023.

Pastor Ken White, 88, offered the invocation and benediction. Oneida County Veterans Service Officer Tammy Javenkoski noted that Monday’s ceremony would be White’s last. It was also the final Memorial Day ceremony to be organized by Javenkoski. 

Assistant veterans service officer Jason Dailey will organize next year’s event as Javenkoski will be nine months from retirement at that point, she explained.

“Pastor White and I are going out together,” she noted. 

Stubbe closed his remarks with a prayer attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: “Dear Lord, lest I continue my complacent way, help me remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there’s war I then must ask and answer, am I worth dying for.”

“I will leave you with a challenge,” Stubbe concluded. “Live your life worthy of their service. That’s the best way we can honor them.”

Heather Schaefer may be reached at [email protected].