National POW-MIA Recognition Day observed in Warren

WARREN, Ohio (WKBN) — The third Friday of September is National POW-MIA Recognition Day. There was a special remembrance of veterans in Trumbull County, and it showed the veterans are not alone.

A day to remember the veterans who didn't make it home from war, and those still being held or missing. Brian Taylor of Warren sat in a makeshift jail made of bamboo.

"I think of their families and the ones that miss them and love them, and I also think of a government that's forgotten them," Taylor said.

He hasn't forgotten the prisoners of war and those missing in action. Someone will sit in the bamboo jail until noon Saturday.

"It hurts me to think that our, that there's people that have forgotten, that those people sacrifice, and those men have sacrificed their lives for this country," Taylor said.

Some people have gotten closure.

A list of the Vietnam and Operation Iraqi Freedom casualties was read. And there was a red rose for each of them.

"The red roses symbolize those who sacrificed for our country," said Mayor Doug Franklin. "Each rose holds a personal message."

Roxanne Funk of Newton Falls grew up watching clips from the Vietnam War every night on the news. It had her attention then, and still does today.

"I just felt some kind of affinity with the service people themselves," Funk said. "I've always been that way with veterans."

She participates regularly in the Laying of the Roses, and Friday, she did again, with her husband to remember a group she didn't know, but wishes they knew of their special place in her heart.

"We laid four roses for the four boys from Newton Falls that were killed," Funk said. "So that's, that was my connection, and I wanted to do that for them."

She was pen pals with her husband without ever meeting. When he came home from Vietnam, they met, and have been married over 50 years.

The POW-MIA Recognition Day will stay set up at Warren's Courthouse Square for part of the day Saturday as well.