That panel below the mvvp.org banner has the names of all the Americans who have fallen in Iraq on it. Bob was a little bummed that he didn't have the rank for a couple of the ones that had died the day before. The information just wasn't available to him. The rest of it was right though.

     

     

  

It seemed to me that the candles people were holding flickered like stars.

      

Karen regretted that it took four thousand dead Americans that shouldn't have died for Bush's lies to get us together. She said we were mainly here to honor their sacrifice. She explained that after a few introductory comments we would be reading the names of the 420 plus Californians among them, one page (about 65) per reader. She asked for volunteers to help with the job.

I think the guy with the bow tie was a Rabbi or something like that. He told us that in Hebrew the word for hope means "to weave". Reverend Diana Gibson said a few words after him.

     

Karen began the reading by doing the page with her sons name on it. I was standing in line with the other readers looking over my page of names while she did that. There were lots of Spanish sounding names, some German and English sounding names, and more than a few Asian and Eastern European. A few gave me that "how should I pronounce it?" feeling. Lots of "Private First Class" and "Specialist" type ranks. A few Lieutenants. Most of the ages were in the twenty something range, with quite a few in the 30s and a couple of older individuals. The highest rank on my page was a Major, and I think he was 42ish. Not that many teenagers, but some.

    

The reading of names continued for quite a while. I think the battery in the megaphone died somewhere in there. I did my reading organically.

  

By the time Karen's sister finished reading the last page at least an hour had passed. It didn't take long to pack everything up and say goodbyes after that. We had a neat crowd, so the cleanup required was minimal.