JACKSON – Duane Ashmon, a Navy veteran and Northampton County’s Veterans Service Officer, welcomed the audience to the county’s Memorial Day ceremony here Monday.

“As many gather at the beaches and at barbecues,” Ashmon said, “we have gathered here today to reflect, somberly, on what those who have sacrificed mean to us.

“Let us honor all veterans today,” he said, “For they all know that freedom isn’t free. They sacrificed their lives for all of us so that we could live free.

“As a nation, we should never forget these heroes,” Ashmon said.

He said that Memorial Day exists so that we never do forget.

The Reverend Franklin Williams Jr., a Marine Corps veteran, provided the invocation, saying, “We come to pay tribute to those who sacrificed for us. Because of what they did we enjoy our freedoms.”

The audience then stood for the National Anthem and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

Doris Faison, an Army veteran, then introduced Arlethia “Lisa” Joyner, the Memorial Day event’s featured speaker.

Joyner, of Gaston served in the U.S. Army Reserves for seven years, and is a 2011 magna cum laude graduate of Chowan University.

She serves on the Executive Board of he Women’s Baptist Home and Foreign Missionary Convention in Raleigh.

“For the past 17 years,” Faison said, “Lisa Joyner has served as a Guardian ad Litem volunteer, championing the causes of abused and neglected children throughout the Roanoke Valley, and for14 years has also served as a board member of the Selective Service System.”

Joyner reminded the audience there is always war and conflict somewhere. She said over 570,000 members of the military have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation from the Revolutionary War to the present.

“They paid the ultimate sacrifice so we can be free,’ she said. “Freedom isn’t free.”

She then said, in her opinion, that every high school graduate should serve for two years in the military to attain discipline in their lives and the emotional maturity they need to be good citizens.

“You don’t see veterans showing off their underwear in public,” she said. “It would also keep young people from filling up our prisons.”

She concluded her brief remarks with a thank you to the audience “for taking a portion of your day to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for us. But also honor those who lived.

“This is not just another day,” Joyner said. “Those we honor today deserve our gratitude and respect.”

The Northampton County Sheriff’s Office Honor Guard laid a wreath at the Courthouse Square’s Veteran monument.

The Honor Guard members are Deputy David Shepherd, Deputy Matthew Walton, Deputy William Killian, Sgt. William James, and Sgt. Christopher Collier.

Following the Memorial Day ceremony, veterans and the families of veterans were invited to lunch at the Cultural and Wellness Center.