Every Memorial Day, Sherry Beeman has gone to the morning flag raising ceremony in the center of Arbutus that honors those local soldiers who have given their life to serve their country.
Every year, she said, the short ceremony, which features bagpipe music and a presentation of the colors by the Dewey Lowman American Legion Post 109, is touching.
This year's promises to be the most moving yet for the Arbutus resident.
Forty-eight years, two months and 20 days ago, Beeman's brother, Arbutus native Brian Wehner, was killed in Vietnam when his barracks was hit by enemy mortar fire. He was 22 years old.
This Memorial Day, a stone slab honoring his service and sacrifice will be added to the Arbutus war memorial near the intersection of Sulphur Spring Road and Oregon Avenue.
"He's my hero," said Beeman of her brother.
The mission to ensure Wehner is honored in the same fashion as all of Arbutus' other soldiers who have died in combat has been led by George Kendrick. A couple of months ago, Kendrick's son, Larry, mentioned to him that he thought that Wehner was the only area native soldier not memorialized at the flagpole in the center of town.
After verifying Wehner's service, George Kendrick moved immediately to ensure that the Vietnam serviceman would be remembered this year, along with the other soldiers who died in other conflicts.
Growing up, Beeman said, she and her brother were inseparable. Among the photos of family members she keeps on a table in the dining room is a small framed photograph of Wehner and herself as small children standing outside a relative's home. He is dressed from head to toe in a cowboy costume.
"He was always wearing his gun and holster," she said, adding that cowboys and Indians was their favorite game.
As he got older, he became interested in cars and hunting and fishing with his father, Charles. He played little league baseball and walked to the Hollywood Cinema, across the street from the Arbutus war memorial, once a week with his friends to catch a movie.
A self-described tomboy, Beeman said she often tagged along on her brother's adventures, even when it made him angry.
"Now I'm glad I had that time," she said.
In 1962, Wehner graduated from Catonsville High School and went to work at Dow Chemical Company in Halethorpe as a machine operator. Like many young men his age, he was just starting to build a life for himself when he received his draft card from the Army in the mail in 1965, Beeman said.
After completing boot camp at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, he was stationed in Georgia at Fort Gordon, where he was assigned to the Signal Corps, responsible for communications and radio, she said.
In the summer of 1966, he received notice that he would be sent to Vietnam, she said.
Though four decades that have passed since Beeman last saw her big brother, she can remember perfectly the day she, her mother, Olive, and her father dropped him off at what was then Friendship International Airport in 1966.
"When he walked out to the tarmac to board the plane, he didn't look back," she said, not even once.
In regular notes back and forth with his parents, Wehner described how much he was looking forward to coming home, Beeman said.
She estimated that he would have been due to return home at some point in July 1967.
Knowing that his mother, now 91 and still keeps the letters in a chest in her home, always disliked the month of February, he reassured her in one of his last letters to the family that February was almost over, and so she could stop worrying about him, Beeman said. On Feb. 27, 1967, he was dead.
"It was the worst day of our lives," Beeman said.
He was buried with full military honors at Baltimore National Cemetery. Every Memorial Day, Beeman said, she and her mother visit his grave, along with those of her father and other relatives.
On May 25, at 11 a.m., Beeman, her mother, her husband, her son, whose middle name is Brian in honor of Wehner, and other family and close friends will travel to the town war memorial to see the marker commemorating his service placed next to the one honoring the other Arbutus natives who have died in service.
The small ceremony will be emotional, Beeman said, but she has grown more accustomed to the grief over the years.
"We still think of him every day," she said. "Not a day goes by."