As thousands of area residents began the holiday weekend with trips to the lake, picnic outings or some other leisurely endeavor, Dorothy Sarlls chose a more somber destination.

Saturday afternoon found Sarlls, of Eudora, placing red, white and blue flowers on her brother’s grave in the veterans section of Oak Hill Cemetery in eastern Lawrence.

“I thought they had a patriotic look,” she said of the flowers. Memorial Day brings back sad memories of double tragedies for Sarlls, who was accompanied to the cemetery by her husband, Gene Sarlls.

Dorothy Sarlls still remembers being called into the manager’s office at Wal-Mart on Sept. 22, 1992, and being told that her brother, Dan J. McAlister, a decorated Army veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars and a Lawrence Police officer, had shot and killed himself.

“He had been ill, and I think he had been in a lot of pain,” Dorothy Sarlls said.

In another section of the cemetery, she placed flowers on the grave of another brother, Leroy McAlister, who Dorothy Sarlls said was shot and killed by his wife in 1980 in his home in Jasper, Texas.

“I still miss them,” Dorothy Sarlls said of her brothers. “Leroy and I were best friends growing up.”

Despite overcast skies and showers beginning in the late afternoon, the mood was brighter at area lakes.

At Clinton Lake State Park, Erin Anders and Melanie Baslock, of Kansas City, Mo., spent Friday and Saturday just relaxing at their campsite. They read magazines and took walks.

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“It’s been beautiful,” Baslock said. “We kind of threw this trip together at the last minute.”

“It turned out just right,” Anders said. “This is a good location and we could get here in 30 or 40 minutes.”

Clinton Lake officials were expecting up to 5,000 people to visit the lake by the end of the long weekend, said Alan Minn, who was selling various permits at the park’s entrance booth.

Fishing was a popular reason Saturday for visiting Lone Star Lake in southwest Douglas County. At least it was for Josh Heyword and Brian Corbin, both of Lawrence. At 10 a.m. they started casting from the shore. By noon they had landed a couple of bass and crappie “and a lot of bluegill,” Heyword said.

“None of it was worth keeping,” Corbin said.

Nearby David Liu and his wife, Glore Liu,of Lawrence, had stopped to look over the lake. They said they didn’t have a fishing license but they had been checking out Lone Star and Clinton lakes for future fishing outings.