Fallen service members’ names read at Bend Memorial Day event

Rachel Zakem was in downtown Bend on Monday when she noticed the “We Are Remembering — Not Just a Number ” Memorial Day event at Troy Field.

“I was going to breakfast at McMenamins and I saw this as I parked,” Zakem said. “I was like, I wonder if Brandon is on one of those?’ (I) thought I’d come back out and put his pictures out so I could take some pictures and send it to some of our friends back home.”

Rachel knew Brandon Haunert from high school in Cincinnati.

She said Brandon entered the Army the year after graduating.

“He went to college for a year, the University of Cincinnati. Just wanted to get out of Cincinnati — he’s one of six boys, didn’t have the ability to. The army offered him the option to go in, and they provide you with education. Then he died, I think two months after going to Iraq.”

Zakem said the vehicle he was in drove over an improvised explosive device (IED), killing Brandon and another soldier.

“As he was dying, he just wanted to know how everyone else in the vehicle was doing,” she said.

This is the 12th year First Amendment Sightings has arranged an event to read the names and home towns of every service person killed in Afghanistan since 2001 and Iraq since 2003.

Event coordinator Tracy Miller said, “We had a memorial service on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War here on Troy Field. We printed out the list of the names.”

“So I went to the public library and printed out the list, and like page after page after page after page came out. We put them end to end and we had them for the memorial and decided that we would read them on Memorial Day. The impetus was we felt we really needed to remember these people.”

The names of each fallen service member have been handwritten on a board, updated as recently as a couple days ago. After each name and hometown are read aloud, a drummer beats a drum. And then the next name is read. And so on.

It now takes 15 hours to read all the names, continuing until about 11:30 p.m.

A red star is placed next to the names of those from Central Oregon on the poster boards placed across the field.

For more information: http://www.weareremembering.com/