Expanding Memorial Day in a New Way

Take a mental journey with me right now, my friends.

Imagine for a moment that you are a police officer. Right here in Bristol, the rightly-proclaimed good place to live. You dearly love your family, your job, your town. You are alive and full of life. While on patrol, you receive a call. You arrive and enter your destination.

You turn the corner in a hallway, trying not to kill the man you’ve come to arrest. Indeed, you are trying very hard not to do that (though you easily could, if you so choose). You are also, in fact, trying very hard to prevent him from killing someone you have never even met in your life - a complete stranger to you. You turn the corner to try to calm and diffuse the situation.

Immediately you are shot point blank in the face.

Everything and everyone you love and hold dear fades away.

You are dead.

The mental images you just formed in your mind were indeed the “real life” last moments of a local Bristol TN police officer. This man had a name. His name was Mark Vance.

Let’s remember him on Memorial Day. And those like him.

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One November night, along with several dozen other souls (mainly BT police officers), I stool in mid-20 temps and listened to one brief heartfelt speech after another, each given in memory and honor of Mark Vance. You can visit Mark’s memorial yourself, any time you’d like, at the corner of Broad and Mulberry Streets in Bristol, Tn.

I discovered that I had once taught the man who took Mark’s life. Yes, this man who murdered a beloved local law enforcement officer had previously been a student of mine at the Bristol Virginia Jail - where I taught Adult Education (GED) and Good News Ministry classes for nearly a quarter century.  I won’t even mention this particular student’s name here, as his name is not worthy to be written in the same column as that which seeks to remember and honor people like Mark Vance.