For Aiken City Councilwoman Gail Bush Diggs, this year's Memorial Day Parade is a gift and a blessing both for the entire community and for her brother, Melden Bush, a veteran who served in Vietnam.
This year's parade, set for 11 a.m. Saturday, also is a kind of rebirth for the annual event. In early February, representatives from the James L. Hammons Marine Corps League Detachment No. 939, which organized the parade for almost 20 years, announced that they would not be able to sponsor the event this year, citing the cost and age of its members.
When Diggs heard the parade had been canceled, she wrote a letter to the Aiken Standard expressing her sadness and disappointment but soon turned those emotions into a determination to bring back the parade even bigger and better.
Her brother had driven her in the parade last year and volunteered to drive her again this year. She wouldn't let him down.
"To have my brother drive me and to just observe his reaction when he started speaking to the other veterans on each side of the parade route and asking them about their service and saluting them and thanking them from one veteran to another, that touched my heart," Diggs said.
"My brother has always been very special to me, not only because he's my oldest brother and I love him dearly but also because he risked his life for our freedom."
After the letter ran in the newspaper, community residents who shared Diggs' drive to keep the Memorial Day Parade going began to contact her.
Jeanne Quattlebaum, of the Trenton Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, was one of the first.
"This was a special annual event for me and my family, and it had to be continued," Quattlebaum said. "So after contacting Gail about my feelings, she listened, and that was all it took. She took it and ran with it and formed a committee. That is when we knew it had turned into a community effort.
"Our veterans and ongoing service military have fought for our freedom and continue to do so. We as American citizens must never forget, and we must continue to honor these heroes and their families for the privileges of today."
As the parade meetings continued, the committee grew to include business and government leaders, retired professionals, educators, veterans and civic organizations.
Quattlebaum and Sandra Herrick, also of the Trenton Chapter DAR, blanketed the community with parade flyers. Other members joined and found a place on the committee, including Ed Knight of the Aiken County Veterans Council; Jack Morrison of the Aiken-Augusta Wounded Warrior Charity Golf Classic; Leslie Hull-Ryde, a veteran; and Wes Jerrell and Betsy Davis of the Aiken Jaycees, which have years of experience organizing Aiken's annual Christmas parade.
"It was like God was putting people in place," Diggs said. "Everybody he sent to us had something to bring to the table."
The parade will honor all veterans but especially Vietnam veterans to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War.
"It has always bothered me that the Vietnam veterans were shunned," Diggs said. "They didn't really get a hero's welcome when they came home."
For Diggs' brother, Vietnam was about service and duty to his country.
"I answered the call to serve my country because I knew my country needed me," Bush said. "There were others who fought for that flag, the red, white and blue. Our country was built on that premise, and I knew I had a duty to serve. I wasn't going to neglect that duty."
An Aiken native, Larry Wood is a general assignment reporter. He started at the Aiken Standard in September 2014.