The Langley Seniors Resource Centre, with help from the Royal Canadian Legion Aldergrove Branch 265, allowed members and other seniors in the community to mark Remembrance Day on Friday morning.
The centre wanted to offer an indoor service for those who can’t stand for long periods of time at outdoor services due to infirmity or the weather.
“We wanted to make sure that those who couldn’t make it to there that we did honour our veterans with a full service,” said Lee Douglas, a seniors centre board member.
She honoured the her recently deceased husband who served in the air force and her late mother-in-law who was also in the air force.
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Fernridge resident Melvin Anderson spoke of his friend who had a stroke recently and then developed pneumonia. Anderson went to visit him in the hospital in Abbotsford. The stroke left the man’s right side incapacitated so, from his hospital bed, the friend saluted Anderson with his left hand.
“Boy, that shook me up. When I think of it, he was saying goodbye,” Anderson told the crowd.
The friend, whom Anderson has known for six decades and served with in Korea, died two days later.
Anderson was with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and at the age of 20, spent year fighting in Korea.
Now 87, he speaks at schools and other places around Remembrance Day, grateful for the freedoms enjoyed by Canadians.
“There’s a lot of countries where kids that are not happy, don’t go to school, don’t have a school and are suffering,” Anderson noted. “And that’s the thing about the war in Korea that hurt me the most, is the suffering.”
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