Thai ambassador to visit city

July 04, 2021

On a recent warm summer Sunday, in a remote, sunbathed cemetery in central Virginia, a Mount Airy man concluded a trip 33 years in the making.

And in so doing, he was reminded that the celebrations many across the nation enjoy today, on Independence Day, has come with a terrible price for many throughout the nation’s history.

Roger Keck’s visit to the small cemetery at Maple Grove Pentecostal Church just outside of Dillwyn, Virginia, was a trip he’d been wanting to make since 1988. In some respects, it was a journey he’d been on since 1966, the first and up until now only, time he’d ever visited the Virginia town.

That first time, in August of 1966, he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, sent there with a sacred assignment — he was accompanying the body of Pfc. David Banks Bryant, who at 23 had been killed in…