Veterans, friends and family gathered across the county Monday to memorialize those who’ve given their lives in service to America.

In Chocowinity, veterans paraded down Cypress Landing Parkway, holding banners and flags naming branches of the military aloft. In Washington, a crowd gathered at Veterans Park as local Disabled American Veterans Chapter 48 and its auxiliary counterpart put words to the meaning of the holiday in a solemn ceremony.

Back for a fifth year as guest speaker was Rev. Frank Huffman, veterans advocate and pastor.

“It’s always been very touching to me the degree of patriotism that is exemplified by this community,” Huffman said, who hails from the western side of the state. “A lot of veterans are proud of their service but I’m so glad the community has treated them the way they should be treated.”

That was part of the Disabled American Veterans state chaplain’s message, as he

he read aloud a letter from an emergency room doctor stationed in San Antonio, Tex., and the transformation the doctor underwent over time, gradually recognizing that the patients he dreading seeing — elderly patients from a neighboring nursing home — were those who had made many sacrifices for their the country through service.

“If it weren’t for the U.S. military there would be no U.S.A.,” Huffman said. “We are losing an incredible generation and this nation knows not what we are losing.”

Huffman described a great divide between what is important and what society as a whole believes to be important.

“We’ve lost contact with reality to the degree people don’t know what’s going on,” Huffman told an audience that spilled over the Veterans Park bleachers into the surrounding lawn.

He spoke about how national news focuses on the sensational rather than the seriousness of an ongoing war and, by extension, veterans’ issues and reminded spectators of the meaning of sacrifice and patriotism in the story of 93-year-old veteran R.J. Clark, under attack every day on the Burma Road in China as U.S. soldiers helped to keep supply lines open even before the country became involved in World War II. It was the late 1930s, and Clark served because he loved his country so much; he sacrificed for a country he loved, even though that same country would not allow him to sit down at a lunch counter and have a sandwich and a Coke because he was a black man, Huffman said.

It’s for those like Clark — the aging, living on fixed income — that people should contact their lawmakers and urge them to support their veterans and expand their care.

“Our country should not turn its back on him (Clark) today, but I’ve seen them do it,” Huffman said.

Huffman said that from his work on behalf of Disabled Veterans of American, he recognizes that North Carolina “is blessed to have two senators in its state that are very friendly to veterans.”