The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Parade honors those who gave lives in wars
CROMWELL » The reasons why people were there were as many and varied as the people themselves.
For the young people, it was the candy thrown from various floats and trucks. For others, it was the music of the high school band, while for still others, it was the color and excitement of the different units in the parade.
And for a dwindling few, their presence at the annual parade was to mark the true purpose of Memorial Day: remembering and honoring the 1.8 million men and women who have died in service to the nation in the past 241 years.
The crowd was smaller than in years past, and many of the men and women who organized the event have grown to such an age they are ready to hand over the responsibility to a new generation.
Under dreary skies that seemed more appropriate to mid-to-late October than the last days of May, hundreds of residents gathered on the World War I Memorial Green
Tuesday to mark the 149th Memorial Day.
Nearly alone among other cities and towns in the states, Cromwell stubbornly holds to the actual day, not the congressionally mandated holiday.
This year, the ceremony coincides with the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into World War I, the “coming-out,” as it were, of the United States as an international power.
Two members of the Cromwell Historical Society made a special effort to observe the anniversary. Elizabeth Burgess and Rebecca Bayreuther Donohue spent hours reviewing a wide range of sources to find — and make — outfits that would have been worn by women in 1917.
The “War to End All Wars” — which, sadly didn’t — has an added significance to the American Legion which, in concert with the town, sponsors the parade. The Legion was established in 1919 by returning officers from the American Expeditionary Force, the 2 million-man American Army that landed in France to tip the balance of the raging war.
The local Legion Post 105 carries the name of two Cromwell men who were killed in action in France: Edwin E. Carlson and Joseph A. Sjovall. Four other local men died of illness or accidents, according to Legion officials.
As is usual, there were the speeches: Mayor Enzo Faienza repeating the exhortation, “Never forget and always remember the sacrifices made by the war dead.”
Legion Post Commander Louis Gagnon demanded “a full accounting” of American prisoners of war and the approximately 80,000 still missing in action from the American wars of the 20th century.”
And Gagnon also called upon the audience to include in their thoughts and prayers “those who will die in future wars.
“Do not take our freedom for granted,” Gagnon continued. “Its price is too well-known. All you have to do is look around.”
But perhaps the most moving address was also the shortest. It came from high school student Jordan Cyr.
It is traditional, Cyr noted, for the high school speaker to recall the history of Memorial Day. Instead, Cyr said he wanted to talk about a trip he had taken to France, and in particular, to Normandy.
In June 1944, a massive Allied invasion set in motion the long-sought “second front” that 11 months later, in concert with the Red Army driving west, led to Nazi Germany’s surrender.
Cyr said he walked the beaches that ran red with American blood on June 6, and then visited the American cemetery at ColvilleSur-Mer, where 9,387 American lie under rows upon rows of crosses and Stars of David. “Without doubt, it was the most impactful event I’ve ever been involved in,” Cyr said of his visit to the cemetery.
The ceremony drew to a close with three volleys fired by National Guard troops and the playing of Taps.
Past Legion Commander Richard Anderson exhorted those gathered before him to “never forget those who died.”
Historical Society President Richard F. Donohue then sang John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields,” recalling the ghastly battles that raged year after year across that tortured section of western Belgium from 1914-18.
Then the sky lightened ever so gently.