SnoCo honors service members with Memorial Day tribute

Published 1:30 am Friday, May 22, 2026

EVERETT — County officials, Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin and Naval Station Everett leadership recognized veterans, service members and their families during a Memorial Day resolution ceremony Wednesday.

The resolution recognizes the 1.2 million military personnel who died serving in all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces since the Revolutionary War, the approximately 45,680 military veterans in Snohomish County and those serving at Naval Station Everett.

“As we approach Memorial Day weekend, our nation will transition into a period of remembrance,” said Jeffery Flemming, Naval Station Everett command master chief, during the ceremony. “It is a solemn debt as a day set aside to confront the true staggering cost of the freedoms we so often take for granted.”

The duty to remember is not just a once-a-year event for those connected to the armed forces, he said.

“There are Gold Star families who will forever have an empty seat at the dinner table. There are shipmates who lost their closest friends,” Flemming said. “Beyond every name etched in cold marble and beyond every thoughtfully folded flag is a story of immense courage and a future that was cut short.”

Franklin led the group in a moment of silence for all who have died during military service.

“We honor their courage, service and sacrifice,” she said. “Freedom is never free.”

Lynnwood resident and veteran Wallace “Wally” Webster II also spoke about his experience as a military medic in Tachikawa, Japan during the Vietnam War.

“To this day I still carry the weigh of my service,” Webster said. “I remember young soldiers taking their final breath and before pulling the sheets over their heads, they would say, ‘Please tell my mother I love her. Please tell my fiancee that I love her.’

“Each time I said, ‘Yes, I will do that,’” he continued, “knowing that I would never ever meet their mother or their fiancee. I said it so they could die in peace, but those memories have never left me. I feel that I lied to them, told them an untruth.”

Memorial Day honors the men and women who gave everything in defense of freedom, Webster said.

“It also honors those who served but still carry the pain and the memory of wounds of war,” he added.

Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; X: @BTayOkay