YOUNGSTOWN — Debbie Aziz didn’t know U.S. Marine Corps staff Sgt. Vincent M. Tomalka, but that didn’t deter her from coming to honor him and 99 other fallen comrades.

“I joined the American Legion on Indianola Avenue and started a women’s group,” Aziz, of Austintown, said, referring to the Ladies of Vietnam Veterans organization in the late 1980s.

Aziz’s former fiance was an uncle of Tomalka, who was killed in the Vietnam War on March 15, 1967, at age 28.

Tomalka was among the 100 Mahoning County soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving their country in the war. He and the others also were remembered and honored during the annual Laying of the Roses ceremony Sunday afternoon near the Vietnam War Memorial in Central Square.

Sponsoring the event was the Vietnam Veterans of America Youngstown Chapter 135.

During the somber, nearly two-hour gathering, one red rose for each soldier was placed at the base of the memorial as his name was read and a bell tolled. Also honored were those who are missing in action and prisoners of war.

Aziz, who laid a rose for one of the fallen soldiers, noted that the Ladies of Vietnam Veterans organization partnered with Youngstown State University to conduct a fundraiser to help build the 7-foot monument, which was erected July 29, 1989. The organization lasted about three years, after which she cared for a daughter who had special needs, Aziz said.

Delivering the keynote address was Dan Rivers, a longtime broadcaster on WKBN-AM 570, who also served two tours of duty in Vietnam as part of the U.S. Navy Seabees.

“Vietnam was something I had to do and something I had to get through,” Rivers said in reference to college students and other mainly young people who vehemently protested the war.

Rivers, who learned the carpentry trade as a teenager and helped build bridges and homes in Vietnam, said he had difficulty at the time sympathizing with protesters, including three of the four Kent State University students that the National Guard shot to death May 4, 1970, during an on-campus demonstration against the war. From his perspective then, he and others were merely following what the draft board had instructed them to do, Rivers added.

The well-known conservative talk-show host, often called “The voice of the Valley,” remembered having been injured in a construction accident near Dong Ha, Vietnam, as part of a 750-man construction crew working on building homes and a bridge, which later became the subject of the John Grider Miller book “The Bridge at Dong Ha.” It chronicles the story of John Ripley, a war hero who braved enemy fire to destroy a bridge in April 1972 to stop a North Vietnamese invasion into South Vietnam.

“The doctor took one look at me and said, ‘Son, you’re going to stay with us for a while. Here’s a bunk,'” Rivers, a 1981 Youngstown State University graduate, recalled.

Rivers said he recalled when many veterans refused to talk about their time in Vietnam and added he sometimes questioned the overall purpose of the war, as well as how he may have contributed to securing and upholding America’s freedoms. Heightening the difficulties for him and many other soldiers was the way they were often treated after their service.

“We had people taunt us upon our return,” Rivers said, but added he remains proud of having answered the call to serve the U.S.

In his remarks, Rivers also expressed his sympathy to those in the audience who had lost loved ones in the war.

Susan Krawchyk, the Mahoning County Veterans Service Commission’s executive director, honored soldiers who are missing in action or prisoners of war.

“We are compelled to never forget that while we enjoy our daily lives, there are others who have endured and may still be enduring the agonies of pain, deprivation and imprisonment,” she said.

Krawchyk also used several objects on hand as symbols of the tragic fate many such soldiers have suffered. For example, she used an empty chair and cover on it to symbolize the frailty of one soldier, and that the comrade will always be in people’s hearts and minds, respectively.

She also said a red rose on the chair represents the blood many have shed to sacrifice for the country, as well as comrades’ loved ones who maintain faith that they will return. A yellow ribbon tied around the rose stands for those who demand a proper accounting of soldiers who are missing, Krawchyk continued.

After Rivers and Krawchyk spoke, most of those who laid a rose also saluted the monument — many with tears in their eyes.

At the beginning of the gathering, the Austintown Fitch High School Concert Choir performed, including its rendition of the famous patriotic Lee Greenwood song “God Bless the USA.” Members sang as they walked through the audience and shook hands with veterans.

Playing the bagpipes was Kim Meek of Leetonia, whose father, Gary Meek, was in the Navy in Vietnam from 1960 to 1965. In addition, her grandfather, Michael Ganitch, who served in the Navy aboard the USS Pennsylvania, was a Pearl Harbor survivor, Meek said.