The bell at the Virginia War Memorial rang four times on Monday, marking the addition of four fallen Virginian soldiers to the museum’s Shrine of Memory.
The Shrine of Memory, which includes around 12,000 names, was originally established to honor soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean War, but has since incorporated soldiers killed in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War and the global war on terror.
The memorial added four names: Sgt. Robert Heal and Cpl. Theodore Landy, both of Norfolk; Lt. Carl Livesay, of Lee County; and Staff Sgt. Mark Stets Jr., of Virginia Beach. Heal and Livesay were WWII veterans; Landy fought in Korea; and Stets served in Afghanistan as part of the global war on terror.
Clay Mountcastle, the memorial’s director, said that was a rare occurrence: “Most years, we don’t add any names to the Shrine of Memory, thankfully.”
The keynote speaker this year was Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who struck a somber tone on a day that civilians often simply consider as the kickoff to summer.
“We have not forgotten,” she said. “It is particularly important to remember what that sacrifice really means.” She reminded the crowd, gathered indoors due to rain, that 19 men from Bedford died in the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
One of the soldiers gathered there was Benjamin Hill, a Vietnam War veteran and Purple Heart recipient from Fluvanna County.
Hill was wounded in action when his unit was attacked. But the person that he said he was there to represent that day was his friend growing up, Fluvanna native Lance Cpl. Walter Ross Jr., of the US Marine Corps, who was killed in Vietnam’s Quang Nam province in July 1970.
“I feel somewhat guilty,” Hill said. “He grew up with me in Fluvanna. And when Memorial Day comes around, I think of that, and many others that were in the war that didn’t make it back. And I made it back, but through the grace of God and a praying mother.”
