Dayton Historical Society members and guests met Monday evening, Feb. 26, and heard an interesting and informative presentation made by Mr. Bert Simms from Baytown.
Simms, a retired police officer, is one of the organizers of a non-profit group called Operation Blue Remembrance, which was formed in 2018 with the goal of making sure that no officer is ever forgotten.
The group began accomplishing this by locating and marking deceased officers’ graves with flags and recording the information provided on the gravestone.
In 2020, Simms and the group of other retired officers that compose OBR expanded their mission to focus on officers killed in the line of duty, taking care to remember those who passed away from other means also.
To date, Simms has visited over 1,100 graves primarily in Texas but also in 6 other states and still has a list of 11,000 to go. The organization also buys gravestones for deceased officers who do not have one and offers a gravestone to any officer’s family truly in need.
Names of fallen officers come primarily from a website listing those killed in the line of duty, which Simms checks often. Recently, OBR has begun an access program, transferring all known data about the officers to their website.
The historians enjoyed hearing about this very worthy cause. Additional information can be found on the Operation Blue Remembrance website: operationblueremembrance.org.