Memorial Service Ideas for Veterans

Planning a memorial or funeral service can be a blur. There’s so much that comes into play in the planning, of course, but ultimately we all desire to celebrate the lives of our loved ones, especially the lives that were well lived.

If you’re planning a memorial or funeral service in Lake City, FL for a veteran in your life, the most important thing to keep in mind is the person you’re remembering. Memorial services are of course a time for family and friends to celebrate their memories of those who have passed away, to acknowledge the myriad ways our lives were changed by the person’s presence and to begin the next stage of our relationship with that person—keeping them still in our hearts and minds, speaking to them, drawing strength from them.

When we plan a memorial service for a veteran, some of the things we often end up discussing with the family are the causes their loved one supported, the things that were important to them and what made them laugh. We try to use these ideas to craft a memorial service that celebrates not only your loved one, but also their personality.

Here are some ideas we’ve seen used in veterans’ memorial services in the past.

Tributes

The most common style of veteran memorial service is the tribute. Families often cut together old film of their veteran, both from later life and from their younger days, often interspersed with testimonials from family members and from other veterans they’d served with documenting a few of the countless number of loving and courageous acts they’d witnessed from their veteran over the years. Almost always, a military color guard is in attendance to play “Taps” and present the next of kin with a flag. These occasions can be as uplifting as they are somber.

Ensuring a continuing legacy

A trend we’ve noticed, and one we approve of, is that it’s often not enough for people to simply celebrate a legacy—it’s often quite important for them to ensure that it continues in some way. One great way to do that is to endow a charity or scholarship fund in the person’s name. The startup fund need not be enormous—often the scholarships are around $500 a year or less—but it’s a simple and way to guarantee that your loved one’s name and legacy continues to be associated with charity and greatness for generations to come. Often, these scholarship funds are set up to help a new generation of veterans return and acclimate to society.

Formal or informal

The growing trend in memorial services is toward more informal services that encourage spontaneous reminiscing rather than scripted moments but, again, we really encourage families to plan services that fit with the personality of the person whose life they’re celebrating, so the service can be as formal or as informal as you’d like. Either way, whether formal or informal, we do find that having a military honor guard on hand helps the family appreciate more fully their family member’s service and sacrifice. If you’d like an honor guard present, that’s something we would be able to help inform you about and arrange.

Plan a funeral service in Lake City, FL

To plan a funeral service in Lake City, FL that celebrates the life and personality of your veteran, simply give us a call here at ICS Cremation & Funeral Home. We’ll get to know you and your veteran, and help you throughout the planning process.

Categorised in: Funeral Services

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