Parade to Honor Families
of Fallen Soldiers

Tulare - Edie Davis has attended many Memorial Day services in Tulare honoring her son, Army Spc. Keith Larimer, and other U.S. soldiers killed in service to their country, even though she admits it is not easy.

“It's just like going through another funeral sometimes,” Davis said.

But she and the families of three other Tulare County men killed in war are happy the Central Valley Vietnam Veterans Association is holding a Veterans Parade at 9:30 a.m. Saturday in downtown Tulare and they have agreed to serve as grand marshals.

In addition to the family of Larimer, who was killed in Vietnam June 19, 1960, at the age of 21, the parade will honor the families of:

• Army Pvt. Angel R. Perales, 22, who died Feb. 4, 1944, in Italy during World War II.

• Army Sgt. Dallas Glen West, 33, who died Dec. 9, 1950, in Korea during the Korean War.

• Army Spc. Daniel Paul Unger, 19, who died May 25, 2004, in Iraq.
Davis said she will ride in the parade down K Street because for her it is another chance to indicate her support for her son's decision to quit school, so he would get drafted and get his service “over with and done.”

She had spent a whole day trying to talk him out of that decision but the College of the Sequoias student would not change his mind.

“I think you have to show it's all right that it happened,” she said.

Tulare resident Al Perales, who was only 5 years old when his brother, Angel, left on a train to join the Army, said it is good Tulare will have a Veterans Parade for a second consecutive year.

“I always feel like military people who come out don't get the recognition they should,” Perales said. “It seems like the government just doesn't understand what they've went through. They train you to kill and then turn you lose to readjust [on your own] to society.”

Gold Star mother Lynda Unger, Exeter, has a different reason for agreeing to ride in this year's parade.

“I think it's important for people to be reminded that we have the freedoms that we do because of the soldiers who fight and those who die in service to their country,” Unger said. “This is a way to honor them.”

A desire to honor an uncle who served in two wars is why Lindsay resident Judy Morgan will represent the family of Dallas West in Saturday's parade.

Her only memory of her uncle was when she was 4 years old and he took her to a café to have a bowl of chili when he was home on leave.

He left a strong impression.

“I looked for him in every television show, every war movie,” Morgan said. “I didn't think he was really dead.”

Her uncle, the first Porterville-area resident to be killed in the line of duty in Korea, also served in World War II and joined the reserves after getting an honorable discharge, she said. He later sought a discharge from the reserves to return to the regular Army and then volunteered to serve in Korea.

The parade will also include many others such as Tulare resident Sandra Ramos' family which, at her urging, has entered two vehicles in the parade, including a 1952 Chevy that belonged to her husband, Jesse, before he went into the Army in 1969.
One of the vehicles is expected to carry her husband, his brothers Steve and Henry, cousin Charlie Ramos and his brothers-in-law Gilbert Ornelas and Richard Tristao. All but two family members served with the Army. Henry Ramos was in the Air Force and Ornelas in the Marines.

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