Our town does Memorial Day proud. When I was growing up in Central Greenwich in the '50s and '60s the main Memorial Day event was the parade of uniformed veterans of WW I, II and Korea through Central Greenwich led by the redoubtable American Legion band, which the children would parallel, riding bikes decorated with red, white and blue crepe paper and baseball cards flapping in the spokes.
That parade is no more, but the parades in Byram, Glenville and Old Greenwich continue the tradition. The American Legion's dockside wreath laying (floating?) ceremony at Indian Harbor Yacht Club also is a moving tribute to the veterans of the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard. A new memorial service dedicated flags along the Mianus River Bridge between Cos Cob and Riverside. This year the venerable Jim Fixx five-mile roadrace was joined by a town-wide party as Greenwich celebrated the unofficial arrival of Summer.
My Memorial Day revolves around the Old Greenwich parade sponsored by the Sound Beach Fire Department. This is Greenwich as small town America at its best. In the past my job was only to photograph the Girl Scouts marching by, but for the past five years I have marched with the Greenwich Democrats. In 2006 we joined the parade using the Animal House technique of just showing up. We acquiesced in the organizer's request to remove campaign signs and T-shirts. The first year we were greeted by stunned silence by some along the parade route. After five years, and led by John Blankley, we were greeted by sustained smatterings of applause and shouts of encouragement.
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It is unfortunate that more people do not stick around at the end of the parade to participate in the Sound Beach Fire Department ceremonies, accompanied by the redoubtable Sound Beach Fire Department Band. Peter Tesei spoke fitting words for the occasion and the roll of Old Greenwich/Riverside war dead was read to a muted drum roll culminating in a stirring rendidtion of Taps.
The highlight for me is Dr. Stuart McCalley's moving and intelligent rendition of Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," which vividly brings home the sacrifice for liberty celebrated on Memorial Day and which reminds us of the task before us all "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. "
