Rolling Thunder sets POW/MIA awareness vigil, ride May 23-24

NORTH CHICAGO — Illinois Rolling Thunder chapters will host a candlelight vigil at Fort Sheridan as well as the Rolling Thunder XXXVIII Demonstration Parade for POW/MIA accountability on Saturday, May 23, and Sunday, May 24, respectively.

Featuring a welcome benediction, area clergy as guest speakers, a Color Guard, Taps, local Boy Scout troops, Amazing Grace on bagpipes and a Walk of Honor, the candlelight vigil begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 23, at Fort Sheridan National Cemetery on Vattman Road in Lake Forest.

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On Sunday, motorcyclists will gather at the Capt. James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center, 3001 Green Bay Road, North Chicago, starting at 8:30 a.m., with a pre-ride ceremony at 10 a.m. At 11 a.m., it will be kickstands up for the approximately 54-mile ride to Cantigny Park in Wheaton, with a ride-through at the Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital along the way.

Membership in Rolling Thunder is not required to participate. The ride is open to all, with no advance registration or entrance fee needed, though donations toward the nonprofit’s POW/MIA advocacy efforts are accepted, retired U.S. Army Col. Wayne Kirkpatrick said. Kirkpatrick is chairman of the board for Wauconda-based Rolling Thunder Illinois Chapter 2.

Kirkpatrick described the ride as a solemn, often emotional experience.

“We lead with the American flag, the POW/MIA flag and all six flags of the U.S. services flying from the backs of the bikes in the front,” Kirkpatrick said. “We also blare the national anthem from one of the bikes.”

Ride participants often encounter patriotic onlookers along the route, he added.

“One year as we were going through one of the little towns along the way I saw a wheelchair crossing the road and I thought ‘Oh no, no, it’ll stop the whole group,’” said Kirkpatrick, noting that timing is critical with police escorts lined up at key intersections for traffic control. “The man in the wheelchair wheeled to a median. He didn’t get in our way. He struggled to get out of his chair and stand erect and salute as the flags went by.

“Wow,” Kirkpatrick continued, “what a paycheck.”

This year’s ride is slated to pass through Libertyville, Mundelein, Vernon Hills, Buffalo Grove, Arlington Heights, Mount Prospect, Des Plaines, Park Ridge, Elmwood Park, Mayfield and Lombard, ending in Wheaton.

At Cantigny, Rolling Thunder will present a POW/MIA Remembrance Table Ceremony.

“Picture a big round table with place settings for each of the services,” Kirkpatrick said. “We read a script about what those place settings indicate. Salt on the table indicates the tears of families of the missing who’ve yet to come home, for example.”

Kirkpatrick said more than 80,000 U.S. service men and women remain unaccounted for from past conflicts. Experts list about 38,000 of those as recoverable.

“We have to bring our men and women home,” Kirkpatrick said, noting that escorting the remains of service men and women who are being repatriated is a chief honor among Rolling Thunder members, who attended five such ceremonies in Illinois in the last 12 months.

“We escort those remains past elementary and high schools and middle schools,” Kirkpatrick said. “When you go by that school driveway and all the kids are out there with their hands over their hearts waving those American flags ... you know America’s in good hands.”