Group honors deceased veterans

The Eastside Business Association met at Avondale Cemetery July 1 to honor our deceased soldiers. A walking memorial service and history lesson was lead by David L. Caswell who paid tribute to soldiers buried at the cemetery, including one soldier from the American Revolutionary War.

Avondale Cemetery is adjacent to Aventine Cemetery, Geneseret Street and Chevez Drive.

“These veterans have not died unless they are forgotten,” said Donald Lada, president of the association. He and his wife Dee, bought 50 small American flags to decorate the grave sites of Flint’s soldiers.

The service began at the grave side of Reuben Robinson, 1759 to 1841, a Revolutionary War soldier. Caswell said the soldier’s marker came to Avondale from the now defunct Campbell Cemetery in Flint.

Participants in the service then walked to the grave side of Civil War veteran, G. S. Dewstoe, of the Sixth Michigan Calvary. Caswell said that Dewstoe served under General George Armstrong Custer and fought at the Battle at Gettysburg.

Elwyn G. Brownell, World War II veteran, was honored with a flag on his grave. Brownell, 1921 to 2005, received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star during his service.

The keynote speaker for the event was World War II veteran George Yancho of Grand Blanc, who fought with the 172nd Combat Engineers Battalion. Yancho was sent to Europe in 1944 and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. The battle had over 800,000 men committed and was the bloodiest battle that American forces experienced in World War II.

He said although he participated in the Battle of the Bulge and was under severe attack, his most significant memory was that of his brother, a pilot who flew in from London to see him after the battle.

Yancho’s battalion also built a road leading to the largest American cemetery in the Netherlands, the final resting place for about 19,000 American troops, and a bridge over the Rhine River where Allied troops crossed into Germany shortly before the war ended.