NEWPORT – Residents of the central Oregon coast are invited to join two Memorial Day observances Monday morning — both starting at 11 o’clock.
The historic Eureka Cemetery & Mausoleum is inviting the community to join in its observance at 11 a.m. at the cemetery, 1101 NE Yaquina Heights Road, Newport. As is tradition, the cemetery will be decorated with thousands of flags, placed on the graves by volunteers to honor the veterans who rest there.
The observance will begin with prayers offered by Rev. John Smithies of Atonement Lutheran Church and posting of the Colors by the U.S. Coast Guard. The event will include additional short speeches, poetry and student Dylan Gibson sounding TAPS on trumpet.
Eureka Cemetery is the oldest in Lincoln County and is known as a Pioneer Cemetery. The initial 22 acres, once rich farmland, were donated in 1879 “to the public of Yaquina Bay for use as a cemetery.”
The cemetery sponsors an “Adopt a Grave” program for veterans buried there who may have no family in the area to maintain their marker or headstone. People can contribute $75 toward one year’s resurfacing or repair of a marker in need of maintenance. A donor may select a specific grave to serve or contact the cemetery office for help in determining a recipient.
Combining ties with the pageantry of floral wreaths floating on the water in front of Depoe Bay Harbor, the Fleet of Flowers ceremony will celebrate 80 years also at 11 a.m. Monday.
The ceremony begins with a program of speakers across from the U.S. Coast Guard station at Depoe Bay harbor. After roughly 45 minutes, people who wish to view the memorial can head to the Depoe Bay Bridge and the area next to the Whale Watching Center.
From there, they will be able to see the boats leaving the harbor and forming a circle offshore. The arrival of a Coast Guard helicopter will herald the beginning of the memorial with the dropping of the first wreath into the ocean. Then, everybody aboard the boats will follow with individual wreath drops.
The Depoe Bay observance will be visited by a flyover of F-15 Eagle fighter jets the Portland Air National Guard as part of than a dozen flyovers it is conducting around Oregon and southwest Washington. Their schedule calls for the formation to reach Depoe Bay about 10:33 a.m.
