In conjunction with the National EMS Memorial Foundation, the National EMS Memorial Service is a yearly event that gives families and EMS personnel the opportunity to pay respects to those that have paid the ultimate price as a caregiver in the EMS Line of Duty.

In Mississippi, beloved Paramedic Doug Ming died of Covid in August of last year and will be honored this year in the national memorial. Ming was responsible for training up scores of younger paramedics and EMTs, teaching them the ways of emergency response through his big personality, quick smile, and skilled hands.

The foundation’s yearly memorial service commemorates the Line of Duty Deaths by placing the names of fallen EMS providers on brass oak leaves that are affixed to wall boards, that make up an ever-growing set of “Trees of Life.” But unlike the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial and the National Law Enforcement Memorial, sadly, there is currently no fixed site for the National EMS Memorial. Since “The Wall” has no permanent home, it must be mobile. The memorial service itself is also therefore subject to move about the country from year to year. Because of this, each year, The Wall is shipped to the location of the memorial service, set up for public view during the memorial Weekend of Honor, then it is dismantled & returned to storage until the next years’ service.

To help facilitate this yearly move, in 2021, GMR (parent company of AMR) donated an ambulance and support personnel to the foundation to transport “The Wall” from its storage location in Dallas, Tx, for the yearly service. This ambulance, dedicated as the “Moving Honors EMS Memorial”, along with the primary purpose of transporting The Wall, acts as a rolling memorial, & creates an opportunity to host local Line of Duty Death Memorial Services in locations that generally would not get to attend the formal National EMS Memorial Service.

Recently, our Honor Guard was notified of the decision to utilize AMR Central MS Operations as one of the ten local Line of Duty Death Memorial Services to be held along the 2022 route of the Moving Honors Memorial. The Moving Honors ambulance will arrive in MS the afternoon of July 12th, station itself locally in central MS overnight, & then hold an LODD Memorial Service at AMR Central MS Station 1 at 9am on July 13th, before departing to the next memorial service location along its way to Arlington, VA.

It is understandably quite an honor to be selected as a location for one of the Moving Honors services. We would like to show as much support for the National EMS Memorial Foundation and the National EMS Memorial Service as possible and invite all available personnel to attend the service on the 13th.

Any EMS, FD, or LEO agencies that would like to help escort the Moving Honors as they traverse the state from Vicksburg to Jackson on the 12th, then from Jackson to Meridian on the 13th, following the memorial service, are welcome to participate.

Any EMS, FD or LEO agency that is unable to attend, but would still like to participate, we would love to work with you on aligning I-20 overpass shows of support as the Moving Honors procession passes.