SEATTLE – Jessica Hebert never imagined she’d be where she was Monday morning, Memorial Day.
But there she was, looking at granite panels that bear the names of Washington’s war dead in the Garden of Remembrance outside Seattle’s Benaroya Hall.
One of the 17 new names unveiled Monday in a small, informal ceremony belongs to her brother, Justin W. Hebert of Silvana.
“It’s kind of weird to think of my brother as being part of the Memorial Day holiday,” Jessica Hebert, 22, said after seeing the wall for the first time. “It makes me appreciate it a lot more than I did before.”
Army Spc. Hebert joins the list of nearly 8,000 of the state’s fallen soldiers. The memorial, dedicated in 1998, is the state’s only full accounting of war dead since 1941. New names are added on Memorial Day each year, if necessary.
“It’s unique to have this in real time,” said Skip Dreps of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, who was on the committee in charge of putting the memorial together. “Normally, we’d have to wait 60 years to commemorate them.”
Hebert was killed in Iraq on Aug. 1, when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the Humvee he was driving. He was 20.
On her first Memorial Day since her brother’s death, Jessica Hebert said there was comfort in knowing that others were grieving alongside her.
“It’s not that it’s just about my brother,” she said. “There are a lot of other people who are part of what makes Memorial Day. It’s better for me to know that the world didn’t just end for me. It ended for a lot of people.”
Ten months after her brother died, Hebert continues to memorialize him.
Last week, she awarded the first Justin Hebert Memorial Scholarship to Omar Estrada of Arlington High School in the amount of $5,135.
She’s planning a 21st birthday party for her brother on July 31 at Shotze’s sports bar and dance club near Smokey Point. All the proceeds will go toward the scholarship fund.
But first, she’s taking the trip she’d promised herself. She gets on a plane Thursday for Camp Ederle, Italy, where she’ll meet some of his friends in the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade.
She isn’t sure what to expect from his friends or from herself once she’s there.
“It isn’t going to be the easiest thing for me and for them,” she said, adding that her brother’s friends don’t like talking about his death. “Maybe I’ll just make a toast to him right away, ‘Because he’s the reason I’m here, and we all know it.’
“I just want to hear his funny stories and see the places where he went out at night,” she said. “I want to walk the trails my brother walked.”
Reporter Victor Balta: 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com.
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