Delaware Military Academy honors missing military service members

The News Journal

The Delaware Military Academy in a Thursday morning ceremony unveiled an empty chair, one that will always remain vacant in honor of missing and captured U.S. soldiers.

The perpetually-empty seat was dedicated as part of the National POW-MIA Chair of Honor Program organized by military advocacy group Rolling Thunder Inc. It will serve as the centerpiece of a garden honoring the U.S. military in a new campus facility.

The Delaware Military Academy Thursday morning unveiled its Chair of Honor, a perpetually-empty seat which will serve as a centerpiece in a school military garden and as a remembrance for the 82,000 U.S. military members still unaccounted for since World War II.

The chair is situated on a platform which was constructed by Cadet Evan Fallon, who built it as part of his efforts to attain the rank of Eagle Scout. Fallon spoke at the dedication ceremony and said his effort was a tribute to the many veterans in his life.

"I am the son of a veteran, the grandson of two veterans, the neighbor of a veteran, and I am fortunate to be the student of several veterans," Fallon said. "This Chair of Honor will raise much-needed awareness to the plight of our POW and MIA service members."

Cadet Evan Fallon (far right) built the stand on which sits the Delaware Military Academy's the Chair of Honor, which is always left empty to remember POW-MIA soldiers.

The ceremony was embellished by the rows of at-attention cadets standing before the assembled crowd of veterans and military boosters. But they were the true audience, according to Delaware National Guard Lt. Col. Wiley Blevins.

Blevins read to the cadets from the military code of conduct, which includes an instruction for soldiers to remember for whom they fight and why.

"That's a pact, a social trust between the soldiers in the field and our country. You are living up to that today," Blevins said. "This completes the deal."

Delaware Military Academy cadets participated Thursday morning in a ceremony unveiling the school's Chair of Honor, meant to remember POW-MIA soldiers.

More than 82,000 members of the U.S. military remain unaccounted for since World War II, and when Rosely Robinson, director of the Delaware chapter of A Hero's Welcome, spoke to the cadets Thursday morning, she wanted them to realize what that means.

"Imagine sitting in a stadium with all these people around you and you close your eyes and all of a sudden you open your eyes, you look to the left and you look to the right and all those people are gone. It's silent. There's nobody there but you," Robinson said.

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