Honoring those who gave all: Patriots Association holds Memorial Day program

A pre-dawn rainstorm didn’t interfere with Monday’s annual Memorial Day Program presented by the Gadsden-Etowah Patriots Association at the Ola Lee Mize Patriots Park adjacent to Noccalula Falls Park.

The annual event pays tribute to those who died while serving in the U.S. military.

A new twist was added this year: a presentation by Gadsden Public Library Director Craig Scott, portraying George Frank Towers.

Towers, a native of Leesburg and a Gadsden police officer in the 1930s, was killed when the USS destroyer Reuben James, on which he served as a chief gunner’s mate, was torpedoed and sunk on Oct. 31, 1941, by a German submarine off the coast of Iceland while escorting a convoy ship bound for Great Britain.

He is considered Alabama’s first fatality in World War II, although the U.S. didn’t officially enter the war until Japan bombed the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941.