Downtown flags unfurled

Norm Smith had been looking forward to boot camp, and to taking his part in the fight overseas. But injuries from a car accident rendered him 4F; his draft card was useless.

The year was 1970, and four of his friends were eventually flown to Southeast Asia.

"They didn't come back," he says, furrowing his brow. "I went to their funerals."

The owner of Downtown Shoe Repair in Marysville does not take the subject of Veterans Day lightly. Wednesday's parade, he says, will likely make him every bit as emotional as he is talking about his friends and his youth on this dreary afternoon.

Smith unfurls a weathered State of California flag, on loan from a local Blue Star Mom.

"This is the most precious thing," he says. "It has Iraqi dirt, and shrapnel holes in it."

He plans to mount the flag, as well as the Stars and Stripes in his D Street store window, along with photos of local military service members and veterans.

The photos accompany a certificate of thanks, a new feature of the Marysville Veterans Day Parade that began last year.

Donna Hannaford, a member of the Yuba Sutter Veterans Day Parade Committee, took the idea from a Veterans Day program she developed at Meridian Elementary a decade ago when she was a school teacher's aide there.

Her daughter — a student, at the time — read an anonymous thank-you poem aloud at the school, and Hannaford says it stuck with her.

Last year, she delivered to downtown merchants about 100 certificates of thanks honoring individual service members and veterans from Yuba and Sutter counties, along with photographs of those honorees.

Some are currently deployed overseas. Some served several generations ago. And at least one died in the line of duty.

Former Marysville City Council member Darlene Hart, a gemologist and sales manager at Diamond Palace on D Street, served as an electronic sensor technician for the U.S. Air Force SR-71 program between 1977 and 1987.

"The military shows you how it is," she says. "I'm blessed to have served."

Hart and James Kellison, one of the store's owners, have plenty of thank-yous to deliver to other veterans by way of certificates, photos, Old Glory, and their own memories.

Kellison flew an OH-58 helicopter in Desert Shield/Desert Storm for the U.S. Army between 1986 and 1991, then served with the Army National Guard for another three years.

His job during the war, he says, "was to cut off reinforcements out of Baghdad."

During one mission flying over the Iraqi/Saudi Arabian border, a missile narrowly missed his scout aircraft.

"Everything went into slow motion," he says. "The casing came twirling toward us and I had to make a major maneuver to avoid it."

Though Hart never saw combat herself, she says, the war in Vietnam permeated everyone's psyche during the time she came of age.

"The class of '69," which was the one in which she graduated high school, "really took a hit," she says.

She and Kellison say that on Veterans Day, they will be thinking about those currently serving, and they will take time to remember their own experiences in the military.

Smith says he will think of combat soldiers and service members who have returned home.

"These people have been hurt mentally and physically," he says. "At least we can respect 'em — give 'em a reason to live, and say 'thank you.'"