TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 For Gold Star families who lost their loved ones serving in active duty, the Memorial Day holiday takes on greater meaning.<\/p>\n
Lorrie Fleming said she thinks about her son all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a good family man,\u201d she said. \u201cHe had a little girl. She was seven when he was killed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sgt. Terry List died in 2006 while serving in the Army.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s now one of many from greater Tampa Bay with his picture on a flag in the Gold Star Garden at Veterans Memorial Park.<\/p>\n
The flags go up every year around Memorial Day.<\/p>\n
Flemming said she still thinks about the day her son began his military journey.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came, and he told me he thought the Army was the way to go,\u201d she said. \u201cI think that\u2019s a calling that\u2019s in their soul. We talked about it. I knew there was a war going on, and he said, \u2018Mom, if not me, then who?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
President of the Veterans Council of Hillsborough County, Joseph Muhlberger, said the Gold Star Garden began in 2021.<\/p>\n
He said it\u2019s fitting that each of these fallen veterans is represented on the flags.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ask them, and they will say the real heroes of whatever that conflict was are those who never came home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Flemming said she misses her son all the time but hopes this Memorial Day everyone takes a little time to think about everyone who lost their lives protecting our country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 For Gold Star families who lost their loved ones serving in active duty, the Memorial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[25157,276,4628,120354,115,135,137,136,3393],"class_list":["post-283122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-honoring-our-veterans","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-matt-lackritz","tag-memorial-day-holiday","tag-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-veterans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}