Travel through time to parades of the past
It’s never good when writers lean on time travel. Whether it’s “Star Trek,” “Harry Potter” or (I don’t do spoiler alerts) “Avengers: Endgame,” time travel is a lazy writer’s way of saying “none of the preceding plot points matter.” About the only exception is “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”
Nevertheless, the recent flap over Stamford abandoning the traditional Memorial Day Parade sent me back in time. The concept of changing the past may be inane, but history bears repeat visits. Thankfully, I no longer have to search through microfilm, a time machine as outdated as Bill and Ted’s phone booth.
1892: Early newspaper accounts of area services document visits to suburban cemeteries and the Soldier’s Home in Noroton. “The exercises yesterday while simple, were impressive and dignified.”
1895: The first Memorial Day services in Sound Beach in Greenwich are held, with 57 public school children marching from cemetery to church.
1898: Stamford expands its modest holiday ceremony. City officials ponder installing a memorial near what is now the Government Center. Downtown streets start to fill about 7 a.m., and are “thronged” within two hours. By 9:30 a.m., a brass band is in position in the city square along with students from most city schools led by girls in liberty crowns and boys on horseback.
When the procession reaches Woodland Cemetery, 79 graves are decorated. Though dozens of marchers are named in news coverage, not a single name from a gravestone is cited. Even 121 years ago, the solemn reason for Memorial Day sometimes seems overshadowed.
If the modern holiday seems synonymous with barbecues (“Fire up the grill and stir your drink. Here are our best Memorial Day recipes,” The New York Times chose as its news alert Friday afternoon), Stamford of 1892 defined Americana.
Shippan Point, with bath houses, a casino and a carousel from Asbury Park, N.J., hosted “Aeronaut Bonnet’s” 300-foot parachute leap from a trapeze (postponed for five hours due to winds), and trips in a balloon. Parade participants made the afternoon trip to the resort via trolley.
Much like the balloon inflation parties that precede the November Parade Spectacular that has become the envy of veterans in recent decades, the sphere was filled with smoke and hot air for an audience. This was performed under the supervision of one Prof. Bonnet, which would sound like a nod to “The Wizard of Oz” except the book was still almost a decade away.
A large American flag reportedly hovers “half a mile” above this spectacle, held aloft by kites.
1899 The Stamford parade starts on Atlantic Street and weaves around downtown to Northfield cemetery before heading to Woodland Cemetery on the waterfront and back. It makes Monday’s 5K at Cummings Beach look like, well, a day at the beach.
1901 Memorial Day coverage in the Advocate appears under the tortured headline “Paraded in
The (1919) Stamford ceremony draws 5,000 participants. Not spectators,
participants. At a time when the city’s population was 35,000. Imagine 18,000 people marching down Summer Street this Memorial Day.
the wet.” Veterans of both wars (don’t make me tell you which ones) travel via trolley between Woodland and Springdale cemeteries.
Col. Henry Huss speaks to students to give them “a much clearer notion of the conditions of the sixties” (yes, the 1860s). He reflects on enlisting in Bridgeport, and being captured as a POW in the Battle of Chancellorsville, the bloody inspiration for “The Red Badge of Courage” that is remembered for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s strategic genius.
1918 During the grim final months of World War I, Memorial Day ceremonies don’t even merit the front page.
1919 With the war over, the Advocate trumpets “Stamford celebrates greatest Memorial Day.” The phrase “World War I” is never used. It is “the Great War,” a title as insipid as its reputation as “the war to end all wars.”
The Stamford ceremony draws 5,000 participants. Not spectators, At a time when the city’s population was 35,000. Imagine 18,000 people marching down Summer Street this Memorial Day. The highlight of a century ago was the presence of 20 automobiles.
1920 Ceremonies include the laying of the cornerstone for the War Monument in St. John’s Park. The lede to the story reads “Warriors of ’65, ’98 and ’17 joined yesterday in paying tribute to their dead comrades.”
2019 With parade turnout low in recent years and Veterans Memorial Park undergoing renovation, organizers decide to try something different with a 5K. The result has been Stamford’s own civil war, a fissure between generations.
City officials maintain it might not be the end of a tradition that marched through three centuries. But don’t trust the future, for the past has taught us that people forget.