Volunteers honor memory of veterans

The Friday afternoon winds picked up just in time to make the hundreds of Stars and Stripes at Lone Mountain Cemetery dance.

Volunteers with the American Legion Capitol City Post 4, Disabled American Veterans Chapter 7, and those who had read about the tradition in the newspaper spent just 30 minutes adorning the 1,200 graves of veterans in Carson City's largest cemetery with the American flag.

It was the fifth year Deanna Guthrie participated, but this time she brought along her 15-year-old son Micah, his girlfriend Heather Thackston, 16, and Micah's friend Justice Sanchez, 15.

Guthrie said she was there to honor her grandfather, Frank Tassi, who was at Pearl Harbor during the World War II attack.

Sanchez said he enjoyed participating.

"They deserve to be remembered for what they did," he said.

Veteran Jack Christensen, recently retired from the Army Guard, was an active duty soldier when he served in Korea and Vietnam. When his guard unit was activated in 2005, he did a tour in Iraq.

Christensen brought his own little platoon with him, identical twin grandsons Nicholas and Steven Arraiz, 6, who pushed the wooden sticks into the ground after grandpa made holes in the ground.

Ron Gutzman of the American Legion manned a truck and handed out the flags. He said he was uncertain when the Legion began the tradition of honoring veterans on Memorial Day weekend in this way, but he was fairly certain why.

"When they opened the veterans section, they brought a lot of men who were buried in Sacramento here," he said. "So there were a bunch of graves with no relatives. And something had to be done."

James Biloig spent 30 years on active duty with the Army. With a cane in one hand and a pole to make holes for the flags, he worked alone along the last row.

"We're just veterans," he said when asked why he volunteering. "These are my brothers and sisters out here."