Wreath laying ceremony honors lives of fallen officers

The lives of three fallen police officers were memorialized Monday during a wreath laying ceremony. The families of Theron Houlditch, Freddie Jackson Harp and George Todd Herring attended the event at the Mountain Brook Police Department Memorial in Crestline.

Houlditch was checking on an abandoned car in 1990 when a teenager on a motorcycle sped over the hill behind him and struck him. Harp was shot and killed during a traffic stop in 1973, and Herring was struck by a truck while he escorted a funeral procession in 1987.

 “They devoted themselves so completely to the community that they lay down their lives,” said Marshal Marty Keely, a former Mountain Brook Police chief and current U.S. Marshal of the Northern District of Alabama. Keely was a first responder when Harp was killed, and was chief when Herring and Houlditch lost their lives.  

“We honor them not because they gave their lives but because of the lives they lived,” Keely said later in his speech. “[Dying] is a burden that those who take the oath of office are willing to accept… By placing this wreath, we continue to honor officers Harp, Herring and Houlditch.”

Abrielle Mullins, a country music singer and daughter of Mountain Brook Fire Battalion Chief Chris Mullins, sang the National Anthem to open the ceremony, and Jeff Jones closed it by playing “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes. Department chaplain Detective Don Garrett spoke an invocation and benediction.

The families of the officers were invited to a lunch at City Hall following the ceremony.