Annual Memorial Day ceremonies scheduled

Veterans and grateful citizens will gather at local cemeteries on Memorial Day Monday, May 26, to honor servicemen who have made the ultimate sacrifice, as well as others who have served.

The annual ceremonies will be held in three locations in north Big Horn County: 8 a.m. at the Byron Cemetery, 9 a.m. at the Cowley Cemetery and 10 a.m. at the Lovell Cemetery.

The public is encouraged to attend any or all of the ceremonies to honor veterans. Local veterans, organized by Robert Boyd Stewart American Legion Post 11, will form a color guard and conduct the ceremonies. Commander Nicolle Laffin will be the master of ceremonies.

Each ceremony will begin with a ceremonial march to a cadence provided by drummer Meg Anderson, and after a welcome by Laffin, Chaplain Jim Thomas will give a prayer, and flowers will be laid at each site.

 Lovell High School music students, directed by music director Carissa French, will sing patriotic numbers.

Laffin said the members of the color guard are Scott Fink and Jack Nicholls, and making up the rifle line are Bruce Dempster and Tom Dillon.

 “Taps” will be performed by Dale Fowler and David Peck.

This year’s speaker is U.S. Air Force veteran Kimberly M. Curtis, who has served the community as a respiratory therapist at North Big Horn Hospital.

A native of Montana, Curtis grew up on a small farm near Livingston in the Paradise Valley. After her graduation from high school, she planned to attend Northwest College in Powell and join the rodeo team, but instead she enlisted in the Air Force on November 2, 1984.

After boot camp in San Antonio and technical school in Biloxi, Mississippi, she served at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and after eight years was transferred to 13 Training Squadron in Colorado Springs, where she served for three years, then was transferred to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado at the Headquarters Space Command Intelligence Squadron. A posting at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas followed.

She served a Temporary Duty assignment (TDY) in Eskan Village in Saudi Arabia for Operation Southern Watch for what she called a “unique mission of monitoring and controlling the airspace south of the 32nd Parallels (extended to the 33rd Parallel in 1996) in southern and southcentral Iraq during the period following the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.”

She also served TDYs in South Korea and Turkey, assigned to Operation Northern Watch enforcing a no-fly zone.

She retired from the Air Force in December of 2004 and in 2015 went to school at Pima Medical Institute in Denver and became a Registered Respiratory Therapist. She interviewed for a job at North Big Horn Hospital in February of 2022, was hired, and she and husband Wayne moved to Lovell.

“I love working at NBHH and in the Big Horn Basin,” she said.