The fallen are honored at the center of this mountain resort town All Wars Honor Roll
Main St
Blowing Rock, Caldwell County
"In Memory Of Those Who Made The Supreme Sacrifice . . and in honor of those who served in all wars to preserve our nation's freedom"
Blowing Rock is like hundreds of small resort towns all over the nation. It has just enough people to make it a close community. Any loss is deeply felt for generations.
In World War I the young men lost were; Linny Coffey, Lloyd Hampton, Harley Hampton, Milton Greene, Daniel Teague, and Albert Walser. World War II claimed Frank Baldwin, Ralph M. Brown, John H. Calloway, O. D. Greene, J. B. Hollifield, William P. Rephart, Dillard Kerley, Ernest L. Presnell, Clyde Storie, Jule W. Tate, Dillard Triplett, and Earl W. Ward.
Korean and VietNam took these men from Blowing Rock and the nearby mountain areas of the Blue Ridge; James H. Benfield, Edward E. Greene, and Donald E. Parsons.
One can only imagine the impact upon the Greene family to have lost three sons to war from three successive generations; The Great War, World War II, and VietNam. Staff Sergeant Ed Greene arrived in VietNam at the end of 1966. He was on patrol just two days after he became a platoon leader in Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry, First Infantry Division. Spec4 Garland Fugate tripped a land mine and died in the explosion. Ed and PFC Elmer Spina were severely wounded and died later that day.
That evening the man he relieved as platoon leader paid silent homage to his friend and comrade. Ed enjoyed drinking rum and coke. When the lights of NCO club went out there were 15 glasses of rum and coke still on the table, waiting for a never to be forgotten friend to arrive from the bush and begin the party. That was January 2, 1967, and 40 years later his friends still remember Ed Greene.
