Post 1336, Ace Hardware, NHS team up to honor deceased veterans

The Veterans of Foreign War of the United States has partnered with Ace Hardware to give away one million U.S. stick flags in the weeks leading up to Memorial Day in an effort to mark as many veteran's graves as possible.  
Ace retailers nationwide will donate flags to local VFW posts at no charge.
Locally, St. Juvin Post 1336 received flags from Matteson Ace Hardware in Coal City and in turn donated them to  Braceville-Gardner Cemetery. This is  the third year the organization has supplied flags to the cemetery.
Nine members of Coal City High School's National Honor Society—Klarissa Aldridge, Katie Girot, McKenzie Hennessy, Helen Onsen, Matt Misewicz, Brooke Chapman, Kiara Abbott, Logan Barrus and Alicia Larouech—and its faculty sponsor, Cathy Lyons, volunteered to help the cemetery colunteers place the flags to honor veterans. Flags were placed at the graves of veterans on Saturday, May 19.
St. Juvin Post honored Matteson Ace Hardware with a citation as an expression of sincere appreciation and full praise for its patriotic services rendered to the community.  
Besides providing this year's flags as a service to the community, Matteson Ace Hardware also accepts worn and damaged flags at its service counter for respectful disposal and provides a worn flag receptacle in the vestibule of the Coal City Public Library.
Braceville-Gardner Cemetery is the final resting place for about 500 veterans who date from the Civil War era to present.  
Among veterans interred there is Lance Corporal Cecil Lee Russell, United States Marine Corps, who was killed in action in Vietnam in February 1968.          LCPL Russell is Coal City's sole service member lost in the Vietnam War.   
Also resting there is John Herron Jr., born in Braidwood in 1872. Herron was working as a coal miner in Cambria, Wyoming in 1898 when the Spanish-American War broke out.  He enlisted in Company C, 1st Wyoming Infantry Battalion and served in the Philippines.  
Arriving back in the U.S. in 1899, he returned to the local area, married and took up residence in Coal City.
When St. Juvin Post 1336 was formed in 1925 Herron was elected its first commander. For reasons not clear, Herron's name did not appear on the Community Veteran's Memorial, likely because he was not a World War I veteran.  
In 2017, 75 years after his death, his name was added to the memorial.