Memorial Day no picnic for vets, military families
For years, Steve Miller and his father, Ed, have celebrated Memorial Day like so many others Americans — with a cookout. Along with macaroni salad and fast-fruit salsa, the holiday spread always includes a pasta dish that combines riceshaped orzo with torn bits of arugula, toasted walnuts, bacon and blue cheese.
“It’s pretty much the whole family,” says Ed Miller, who has hosted the event at his house in Coraopolis for years, but on Monday will allow his son to do the honors in Beaver.
Yet they know food is not the point of the Federal holiday, which was established by Congress in 1968 to honor military personnel who have died while serving their country. Both men are veterans who spend the entire week leading up to Memorial Day paying tribute to their fallen comrades with personal and private acts of remembrance.
On the prior Tuesday, they travel to a half-dozen local cemeteries near the Keith-Holmes VFW Post 402 in Coraopolis, where both are longtime members, to place flags at the gravesites of veterans.
On Saturday, they and other members head to local stores for the post’s annual Buddy Poppy campaign to gather donations for local veterans and military families in need. On Sunday, they join their color guard for an annual Memorial Honor Roll at a dozen area cemeteries and memorials.
Then, on the actual holiday, father and son gather again with other vets, family and community
members for a granddaddy of a parade down Coraopolis’ Fifth Avenue. Afterward, they read aloud the names of post and auxiliary members who have died since the last Memorial Day.
“We’ve done the parade for decades, and fundraise for it all year long,” says Steve Miller, 44, who served in the Air Force Security Forces from 1996 to 2000 in both Saudi Arabia and Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.
At least that’s how they
to do it until 2020. The coronavirus put a damper on nearly everyone’s Memorial Day celebrations last year. Parades were canceled, cookouts were limited to immediate family members and summer travel plans evaporated.
Even with restrictions being lifted across Pennsylvania, many of this year’s memorial gatherings, community picnics and other events have been canceled. The annual parade in Coraopolis was one casualty, not so much because of pandemic restrictions, says Steve Miller, but because the VFW couldn’t get enough people to run the parade. “So we had to shift gears.”
In lieu of marching down Fifth Avenue on Monday, members will hold a long-delayed dedication at 11 a.m. for a new $100,000 war memorial in front of the post’s Mulberry Street building. Afterward, food trucks will dish up a traditional cookout menu of burgers, hot dogs, barbecue and ice cream, with adult beverages for sale inside the post.
But make no mistake: While gathering with family and friends is always cause for celebration, Memorial Day means so much more to those connected to the military. The holiday usually considered the unofficial beginning of summer was born as a day to honor the brave men and women who lost their lives fighting for our country.
The earliest observances began after the Civil War with a nationwide day of remembrance known as Decoration Day. In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act to create a threeday weekend for federal workers, and the first official Memorial Day followed in 1971.
In planning Monday’s event in Coraopolis, Steve Miller said, “we wanted to provide the community an opportunity to salute our veterans that have made the greatest sacrifice for our freedoms, since that’s what Memorial Day is really about.”
Ed Miller, who enlisted in the Army in 1970 and served in Germany as an intercept officer in the Army Security Agency, agrees that Americans need to be reminded of Memorial Day’s origins.
“It makes me think about people who served and didn’t come home,” he says. “It just means freedom.”
Executive chef Todd Cassell, who joined the Marine Corps right out of high school, is cut from the same military-issue cloth as the Millers. A native of Columbus, Ohio, he decided to enlist in the sixth grade, after watching John Wayne portray Marine Sgt. John Stryker in “The Sands of Iwo Jima.”
“There was just something about their grit, their panache, their uniforms .... everything about the Marines, it just really hit home with me,” he says.
The Imperial resident was so excited by the prospect of enlisting that he got his mother to sign a waiver so he could show up for boot camp — five days short of his 18th birthday.
His four- year tour at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, he says, was the four best years of his life. Even after parting ways and heading to New England Culinary institute in Vermont to become a chef, he’s stayed in touch with the men he served with. The camaraderie among vets is such, he says, that “they would be there for me not matter what.”
Which is why for him, Memorial Day is different: “For civilians, it’s a civilian thing,” he says. “For veterans, it’s a veterans’ thing.”
While he was fortunate to walk away from combat unharmed, he is distinctly aware of those who paid the ultimate price with their lives.
“So for me it’s a day of reflection,” he says. “It’s important to remember those who went through so much for us.”
Holidays are usually pretty busy in the restaurant industry. So Mr. Cassell, who became executive chef of The Vault Taproom in 2019, hasn’t been able to really celebrate Memorial Day beyond a quick visit to the closest memorial to pay his respects.
This year, though, he’s headed to Vermont to spend some quality one-on-one time with his 8- year- old daughter, Ayla.
Normally clean shaven, the chef allowed his beard and hair to grown during the pandemic. The first order of business when they meet, he says, is for Ayla to shave his head. They’ll then head to the kitchen to prepare not hot dogs or hamburgers, like most everyone else in America, but grilled salmon, her favorite.
“She loves it,” Mr. Cassell says.
If you’re on the lookout for some new Memorial Day recipes for this year’s cookout, here are two military-approved dishes to try this summer.