Recently retired Santa Cruz Sheriff's Chief Deputy Don Bradley asked more than 100 people gathered at Evergreen Cemetery Monday to add police officers to the list of the country's defenders who were being memorialized on a holiday that started after the Civil War.
Police officers protect the homeland for the troops serving in battle, Bradley said, adding that a law enforcement officer is killed every 58 hours in the U.S. And he said the price of freedom includes more than 1.2 million veterans killed in battle and another 1.2 million wounded.
Bradley held up photographs of Santa Cruz Police officers Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker and Elizabeth Butler at the 146th annual Memorial Day ceremony at the cemetery, which had its birth in the 1850s.
Vice Mayor Lynn Robinson tearfully paid tribute to the officers who were murdered Feb. 26 during what they expected to be a routine arrest.
The moving ceremony included bagpiper Mick Bench, bugler Steve Johnson and Chuck Woodson, who conducted a flag folding ceremony and included the meanings of each fold, including those for mothers, fathers, Hebrews and Christians.
Ninth grader Sophie McCallum-Spalaris, who attends Alternative Family Education, read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Michael Logue sang "God Bless America."
Nina Simon, the director of the Museum of Art and History was the Master of Cermonies.
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