Will County honors fallen first responders at emotional service

JOLIET, Ill. (CBS) – While Memorial Day honors military members who made the ultimate sacrifice, in Will County, Thursday was another kind of Memorial Day for law enforcement officers and first responders who have lost their lives.

Every May, as the names are read aloud, downtown Joliet shares in the grief that families shoulder.

Lenore Carroll has been coming to the memorial for years.

"My father was killed in the line of duty," she said. "Louis Barney. 1954."

She was a little girl at the time when her dad, a 12-year veteran of the Joliet Police Department, fell off his motorcycle.

"He went into a coma that night and just never regained consciousness," Carroll said.

She was proud of her dad's service as she would be of her son's. Shawn Carroll was a lieutenant with the Joliet Fire Department, she said.

But in 2017, a mother endured the same kind of pain she did as a child.

This time, she lost her son.

"He was 38 when he passed away," Carroll said. "It was carcinoma of the lung."

Every year, she comes to downtown Joliet to honor the fallen on Will County Law Enforcement Memorial Day.

There are 37 names engraved in granite. The most recent one was added in 2022.

"I don't know what I would do if they didn't have it," Carroll said. "It's nice to know that people do remember."