Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
For many years, the Arbovale Cemetery Association has hosted a Memorial Day service at the Arbovale United Methodist Church, where community members gather to not only remember those they lost in the past year, but to remember everyone who is interred at the Arbovale Cemetery.
At this year’s service, Arbovale Cemetery Association President Bob Sheets spoke about the formation of the cemetery and its association, as well as the condition the cemetery was in when volunteers came forward to take care of it.
“The cemetery grew out of a graveyard,” he said. “The graveyard was the old Deer Creek Union meeting house which was located in the older part of the cemetery. Before the organization of the Arbovale Cemetery Association, the cemetery was practically a wilderness with greenbriers, blackberry briars, matted grass over three feet tall. There weren’t any caretakers and caretakers were difficult to find.”
In 1943, the association was founded and the cemetery was cleaned up and prepared for those who were returning to their final resting place from the battlefields of World War II.
Since then, the association has continued to maintain the Main Cemetery and its Annex in Arbovale.
In preparation for this year’s service, association member and Pocahontas County Veterans Honor Corps commander Rick Wooddell, joined by his wife, Rene, and sister-in-law, Anita Crist, placed 463 American flags on the graves of service members at both locations.
“As you go there today, you will see those flags and it would be wise to think of those individuals and all of your loved ones, and by being here today, you are serving,” Sheets said. “John Milton, in his poem, ‘Paradise Lost,’ said, ‘they also serve who only stand and wait,’ and that is our service today. As we stand, as we wait and honor those and respect those who have gone before us.”
Sheets introduced guest speaker Kim McFarlane, Retired Chief Master Sergeant, U.S. Air Force.
McFarlane reflected on her time serving in the Air Force – 39 years which included 20 years in the U.S. Air National Guard.
“I enlisted under President Carter and judging – please don’t take this the wrong way – but by the faces in the audience, you all know when that was,” she said. “I was seventeen. At that time, to be in the service, your parents had to sign for you. I turned eighteen in basic training, so there was no big keg party. We had a GI party and got to clean the dorm. That was the big day celebrating my eighteenth birthday.”
McFarlane was trained to be an air traffic controller, and she said her big takeaway from that time was managing stress levels and learning which things were worth stressing over.
“It put stress in a whole new perspective for me,” she said. “If you don’t crash a million-dollar airplane or kill anybody on your day at work, you can sleep at night. I tend to put that as my baseline for a lot of things. Can I live with this? Can I sleep at night? Is it a minor thing I’m worrying about?”
Initially, McFarlane planned to serve for four years and return to her life as a bass player in a punk rock band, but opportunities continued to rise and she took them, making a career for herself in the military.
“I went to Germany my first assignment, then I went to England and did some amazing things,” she said. “I had all these opportunities that were presented and I had a lot of great mentors along the way that guided me and kind of pushed me or parented us.”
McFarlane served as an air traffic controller for 10 years of active duty and then she joined the Air National Guard where she became a heavy equipment operator.
“This girl loves to be outside and dig in the dirt,” she said, laughing. “Really loved being on a big tractor. Country girl. I had a lot of fun playing in the dirt, working for an engineering company full-time and did a lot of other things.”
After 20 years in the Air National Guard, McFarlane went on to be full-time in the reserves in cyber security.
“I didn’t do cyber security,” she said. “I hired the best and brightest because at that point, I was leadership. I was chief master sergeant.”
During her career, McFarlane also went to college, a lot. She earned seven college degrees.
“I like going to school,” she said. “I love learning.”
During her time in the military, McFarlane said she made a lot of friends and met people she considers family. Instead of going into great detail about her career, McFarlane said she wanted to focus on remembering those who served and gave their lives for this country.
“We’re here on Memorial Day to remember and memorialize our brothers and sisters is arms,” she said. “The Air Force, Marines, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, but I want to add first responders, emergency personnel, firefighters, police, EMTs. They are part of that cadre.
“As we know, after 9/11, we lost a lot of our first responders,” she continued. “They are part of who we memorialize on this day. An all-volunteer force truly shapes America.”
In closing, McFarlane spoke about how the poppy became the symbol of Memorial Day. In 1915, Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote the poem, “In Flanders Fields,” which is written in the perspective of the fallen, describing poppies growing between the graves.
“The poem established the poppy as a symbol of remembrance and we continue to wear it to this day,” McFarlane said.
McFarlane passionately read the poem to close out her address.
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead, short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours be hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep
Though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Before moving the service to the cemetery for a 21-Gun Salute by the Pocahontas County Veterans Honor Corps, pastor Amy Paul read the list of names of those who were interred at the Arbovale Cemetery June 1, 2025 to May 23, 2026.
Family members and friends were assisted by Linda Stewart and Suzanne Stewart with placing flowers in two arrangements as the names were called.
Those memorialized were: Dorothy Winggoth, Charles Bryant, Lucille Mallow, Jack Nelson, Mary Ann Griffith, Calvin Galford, Mancil Doolittle, Ralph Waybright, Jeneta Shears, Sharon Shears, Charles Rexrode, Betty Rexrode, Edward Rockafellow, Alice Miller, Wanda Raupach, Pearl Clarkson, Thomas Settle, Lisa Marie Foe, Katherine Elanore Sheets, Betty Ralston, Daniel Arbogast, Leroy Webb, Thurman Sampson, James Ray, Georgia M. Mullenax, Connie S. Wooddell, Mary Galford, Ben Elbon, Deobrah Hoeter and Billy Cassell.
