An early Memorial Day ceremony at the University of California, Davis, will include the addition of another Aggie's name to the Golden Memory Book of UC Davis students and alumni who died in military service.

The ceremony, open to the public, will begin at 5 p.m. Thursday, May 22, on the Memorial Union’s North Plaza (in front of Freeborn Hall), at the foot of Howard Way off Russell Boulevard. The program includes an Army-Navy ROTC color guard, a wreath presentation, and remarks by Adela de la Torre, vice chancellor of Student Affairs, and Liam Burke, an Army ROTC cadet.

In addition, UC Davis student and alumni veterans will read all of the names in the Golden Memory Book. A reception will follow in Griffin Lounge in the Memorial Union — dedicated upon its opening in 1955 to the memory of Aggies who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Today the Golden Memory Book has 134 pages for Aggies lost in World War I and World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And now there will be one from the Iraq War, for Lt. Col. Mark Taylor, an Army surgeon who died 10 years ago this year in a rocket-propelled grenade attack near Fallujah.

Taylor, born and raised in Stockton, came to UC Davis as a transfer student in 1982. He was a cadet in the campus’s Army ROTC, and, upon graduating in March 1986, received a commission as a second lieutenant along with his Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry.

Then, as a part-time soldier in the California Army National Guard, he earned his pharmacy degree at UC San Francisco, and went from there to medical school, at George Washington University. He did his residency at Madigan Army Medical Center, Fort Lewis, Washington, and a five-year internship at UC Irvine Medical Center.

He went on active duty with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, assigned to Womack Army Medical Center and the Forward Surgical Team, 782nd Main Support Battalion. He was on his second deployment to Iraq when he was struck down on March 20, 2004, at age 41. His mother, Roberta Taylor of Stockton, will attend the ceremony.

Vice Chancellor de la Torre said of the fallen in the Golden Memory Book: “They were our students, our alumni, taken far too early. Their sacrifice is never forgotten."