Full Video: Memorial Day on the Coast, with Honors Led by the American Legion and Coast Guard

A Memorial Day service among the graves in Fort Bragg included a prayer by the Rev. Sally Swan, the traditional readings by Liz Rantala and Rick Cooper, a rifle salute, and a bugler sounding taps. All of it is captured in our full video below — a powerful watch on a day of remembrance.

What you can’t see in the video is how hard this was for a proud but shrinking 107‑year‑old organization to pull off. American Legion Post Sequoia 96 has seen its membership fall over the years — now about 60, down from 85 not long ago. With so few active members, even putting on their first Saturday breakfasts has become a challenge.

What matters most is that they came together to do something essential: the annual service honoring those who died in defense of their country. That’s the heart of Memorial Day — when the living step forward to lead the rest of us in remembering those who gave all.

Seventy‑one people attended the traditional American Legion service, standing quietly as the prayers and honors were read. Walking away afterward with Legion member Larry Goeckler, we talked about how quickly time moves, how much changes, and yet how the spirit of this day seems to hold steady.

“There is nothing I do now that I feel better about than coming here and remembering them on Memorial Day,” Goeckler said. While the American Legion now struggles to find enough members to staff its once‑famous breakfasts, the uniformed officers still assembled, and the Coast Guard station in Noyo Harbor presented and retired the colors for the service. Fort Bragg’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 11166 closed and surrendered its charter two years ago. American Legion Sequoia Post 96, founded in August 1919, has carried on. In 1931, the city of Fort Bragg gave the land that became the Post’s permanent home — a site that later hosted its centennial celebration in 2019.

The American Legion now carries on as the occupant of Veterans Hall, a building the city of Fort Bragg hopes to make more available as a rental venue for non‑veteran groups in the years ahead.

Despite the participation slump affecting so many community groups in recent years, in an era when attention is pulled in every direction, there was still a lot of good on Memorial Day. Fort Bragg was full of flags. The ladder truck raised its enormous flag above the fire station, the city’s flags filled downtown, and displays appeared all over town.

There is a new veterans’ memorial beside Veterans Hall in Fort Bragg. The project was a joint effort: the city, led by former Police Chief Neil Cervenka, located the large stone; Rose Memorial Cemetery funded the bronze plaque; and the American Legion crafted the wording, Legion officer Richard Neils said.

The American Legion was one of Fort Bragg’s busiest organizations throughout the twentieth century, with news of Sequoia Post 96 filling the pages of the Advocate and Beacon from the 1920s onward. Both the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars saw their greatest growth after World War II, when millions of returning service members — followed by Korean War veterans — filled their ranks. Vietnam veterans were slower to join, but they sustained both organizations through the decades that followed.

Linda is a veteran but was working and couldn’t attend. Frank is not a veteran, but he was always inspired by his father, Carl Hartzell, who served four years in World War II as an Air Corps–Air Force officer. Carl believed deeply in honoring those who served — especially those who died — while also believing that the freedoms they fought for included the right to question government. He opposed the Vietnam War and other American military actions he saw as driven by profit and greed.

Frank did what he could today — he voted, dropping his ballot at City Hall. Some say voting makes no difference, that there’s no hope left, or that those who died made their sacrifice only to be let down. We don’t believe that. We believe America is at a low point, but we also believe its spirit — and the spirit of the people who built it — can carry us forward.

The greedy may hold money and power, but they don’t have the courage to stand up and stand out the way Americans always have. The people we honored today did. They gave up the good lives they might have lived for us, not knowing what we would do with the freedom they left behind. They trusted that we would find our way.

So on this Memorial Day, as the flags lifted in the wind and the bugle echoed across the graves, the message felt clear enough: courage is not gone. Hope is not gone. The task now is to find that same courage and hope in ourselves — and to carry it forward, the way they once carried it for us.