Butch Peelman, Bob Boyd, Dale Matha and Ron Seyboldt

U.S. Navy veteran Bob Boyd touched our family and hundreds of others this summer.

Yesterday, he honored veterans, POWs and MIAs including my dad, Walter C. Strosser.

A former prisoner of war during World War II, Dad was also Bob Boyd’s world cultures teacher at Tech Memorial High School. Bob graduated in 1966. He shared many memories with my brother Dr. Walter L. Strosser and me.

“I just wanted you to know that in those days, we knew many of us were going to Vietnam,” Boyd told me. “Your dad told us all that if he and his neighbor got in a fight, he’d want to fight at his neighbor’s house and not his own. That was why we had to go to Vietnam. I’ll never forget that.”

Boyd, 64, is the founder of Armed Forces Christian Ministry, and he is on a mission to honor veterans and current service men and women. He is responsible for American flags along Erie area bridges. Boyd has placed flags on the Peninsula Drive bridge, the Sgt. Donald S. Oaks Memorial Bridge, the Bayfront Connector near East 12th Street and the Jeremy Horton bridge on Powell Ave.

Yesterday, I was honored to join Boyd and half dozen others as they attached  flags to the Nagle Road bridge near Route 20 in Harborcreek — the fifth bridge Boyd has lined with flags and the first to honor POW’s and MIA’s. next, he plans to place flags around the  Harborcreek High School athletic field.

The flags have been donated by funeral directors and cemeteries. He plans to remove the flags before bad weather hits — after Labor Day, but he is hoping to keep the flags up until Veterans Day. Here’s a WJET-TV video of the story on the Powell Avenue bridge.

Boyd’s helpers include HAM operators Butch Peelman, Ron Seyboldt and Dale Matha, grandfather of football player Dan Matha, a McDowell graduate in his senior year at Indiana University of Pa.

To help out, contact Bob Boyd at bobboydjr@usa.com

Pam Parker is the editor of Lake Erie LifeStyle, Her Times and House to Home at the Erie Times-News in Erie, Pa.