Veterans’ Home hosts annual Memorial Day program and lunch

Published 2:15 pm Friday, May 22, 2026

QUINCY — Roy Webb said he will always be grateful for the chance to share stories of those he has served with during his time in the Army, even when it’s a solemn occasion like the the annual Memorial Day program at the Illinois Veterans’ Home at Quincy.

“It’s always an honor and privilege for me because it gives me a chance to talk about some of my friends and comrades that paid the ultimate sacrifice,” Webb said Friday morning.

Webb is a brigadier general who retired from the Iowa National Guard in 2017. From 2016 to 2022, Webb served as the superintendent of the Quincy Public Schools. Friday morning, he gave the keynote address to a full auditorium at Lippencott Hall on the Veterans’ Home campus.

“(We) need to take time to honor the service, and especially the sacrifice, of our fallen heroes and so I want to take a little time to do that,” Webb told the crowd made up of residents of the home as well as family and friends along with community leaders and volunteers. “Fewer and fewer people know about service and sacrifice. This room without a question, you guys know about service and sacrifice. I know that for a fact.”

Webb told stories of men he served with in Afghanistan, of the family he presented a flag to during a funeral service, a local Vietnam veteran who served not because he was drafted but because his country needed him, and of a soldier injured in Iraq that wanted to be there when the rest of his unit finally came home.

“A lot of people ask me, you know, being a general officer and when I talk about all this sacrifice, they’ll ask me ‘Is it worth it? Is that sacrifice worth it?'” he said as part of his address. “It’s always an easy question for me to answer. Absolutely, it’s worth it. We still live in the greatest country. Now, we have our problems, we’re a little divided, we get angry at each other now and then if we’re on different sides of issues.

“(But) I’ve been to foreign countries,” he continued. “I’ve been all over the world. We have more wealth. We have more freedom than anywhere else in the world, and we have more security. I will tell you the people to thank for that are the men and women in this room. The servicemen and -women who put their lives on the line, signed up, and said they’re going to do it for their country. You guaranteed that wealth, you guaranteed those freedoms, and you guaranteed that security for all of us in our country.”

Following his speech, Webb said that it’s always emotional in rooms like that, where nearly every person in the room has stories to share like his, about friends they lost in service, and how important it continues to be to remember those sacrifices.

“They should be thanked every day,” Webb said. “But we take Memorial Day weekend, and Veterans Day weekend, and make them special times for them. They’re pretty emotional for people here in the room, because they have stories like mine. It’s a difficult time for them too, so we need to support them.”