Attendees of the 2015 International Homicide Investigators
Association symposium in Washington, DC, gathered at the National Law
Enforcement Officers Memorial on the evening of Tuesday, August 18, to lay a
wreath in honor of the more than 20,000 law enforcement officers whose names are
on the Memorial walls.
Memorial Fund Chairman and CEO Craig Floyd welcomed the
guests and spoke of the annual candlelight vigil ceremony held at the Memorial
during National Police Week in May, a tradition since the Memorial was
dedicated in 1991. He also shared a story about the special guest and keynote
speaker for the second candlelight vigil in 1992, radio host Paul Harvey.
“I picked him up that day at the airport and I brought him
to the Memorial,” Floyd started, “and I walked along the west wall behind me
until I got to panel 60W, Line 18. And as we were walking, he became impatient,
and he said, ‘Craig, where is his name?’ His father, Harry Aurandt, had been
shot and killed in December of 1921, when Paul Harvey was three years old. Paul
Harvey’s father’s name is proudly inscribed on these Memorial walls, along with
more than 20,000 others.
“And when I finally pointed to his name on that wall, Paul
Harvey, a world-renowned gentleman who, at that time, was in his seventies, got
down on his knees. He touched his father’s name and began sobbing. It touched
him to see his nation had not forgotten his father after all these years, that
his story would continue to be told at these Memorial grounds.”
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