MOSES LAKE — The Memorial Day ceremony at Pioneer Memorial Gardens cemetery brought out a scattered crowd of people Monday morning to visit graves and pay their respects to fallen heroes.

As in past years, flags lined the pathways of the cemetery, located east of Moses Lake, and smaller ones marked the graves of those who had served in the armed forces. The gun salute ended up being only two shots, as the third blank in the rifle was a dud.

“We only had a week to prepare,” said rifleman Ross Bacon, a member of the Grant County Light Foot militia, whose hat proclaimed him an Iraq War veteran.

Taps was blown by two buglers, one of whom was Fil Rivera, a retired Green Beret and veteran of the Vietnam War and the Dominican Civil War.

“Most people don’t remember that one,” Rivera said of the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. The U.S. intervention came when President Lyndon Johnson sent troops to the Caribbean nation to prevent what he thought was going to be a communist revolution similar to Cuba’s.

“We came to liberate what didn’t actually happen,” Rivera said.

Former state senator Harold Hochstatter addressed the gathering, speaking on courage, risk and sacrifice.

“I want to address you on the idea — we’ve all heard it — ‘if we can save just one life, it’s worth it,’” Hochstatter said. “Let me tell you about some people who didn’t believe that. The people who went out and shot the king’s troops didn’t believe that. They went out and risked their lives for this country.”

With allusions to the Alamo, Abraham Lincoln, the biblical apostles and Joe Hooper, for whom Moses Lake’s American Legion post is named, Hochstatter spoke for about five minutes on the importance of stepping up and putting one’s life on the line.

“(Winston) Churchill said that the prime virtue is courage; it makes all other virtues possible. I think we need to be reminded of the other side: cowardice is reasonable. We can find all kinds of reasons to back out of things. Courage says ‘we’ll take them on.’ And this country has a history of doing that,” Hochstatter said.