Milton To Honor Local Veterans With Memorial Day Ceremony

The city of Milton will hold its seventh annual Memorial Day Ceremony on Monday. 

The event will start at 10 a.m. May 26 at Freedom Park, located at 13200 Deerfield Parkway. 

This year's ceremony features local veterans, Milton Fire Department Color Guard, Taps, a flyover and more.

The Rev. Dr. Robert G. Certain, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel will be the ceremony's featured speaker. 

As a combat aviator during the Vietnam War, Col. Certain flew more than 100 missions over Southeast Asia in 1971 and 1972. Certain was shot down and captured in December 1972 and spent several months in a Hanoi, North Vietnam prisoner of war camp. 

Following Vietnam, Certain earned his doctorate in divinity and became a military chaplain at the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command and Air Mobility Command and at the Air Force Academy.

In addition, he serves as an advisor to the secretary of defense through the Defense Health Board on its committees on Psychological Health and Medical Ethics and on the Task Force for Prevention of Suicide by Members of the Armed Forces. He is also an advisor to the secretary of the veterans' affairs through the Advisory Committee on Former Prisoners of War. 

Certain is also the founding president of Care For The Troops, Inc., an interfaith charity that teaches faith community leaders to recognize the presence and unique stresses of veterans and their families living in their midst.

When former President Gerald Ford died in late 2006, Father Certain was chosen to lead all the memorial services and to preside at his burial in Michigan.

The ceremony will conclude with a roll call of local veterans who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Their friends and families are then invited to reflect upon the markers created to remember their legacy and placed along Deerfield Parkway and in Crabapple by Milton Councilman Bill Lusk.