Easthampton honored the nation's veterans, including its 100 residents who have been killed in action since the Civil War, with a parade Monday followed by a solemn ceremony on the lawn of the Emily Williston Memorial Library.
View full sizeRobert W. Hill III, center, head of Williston Northampton School, delivers an address to the assembled residents, veterans and active service personnel at a ceremony following Monday's Memorial Day parade in Easthampton. Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan is at left and Mayor Michael A. Tautznik is at right.EASTHAMPTON – The city honored the nation’s veterans, including its 100 residents who have been killed in action since the Civil War, with a parade Monday followed by a solemn ceremony on the lawn of the Emily Williston Memorial Library.
The parade stepped off at 10:30 a.m. from the parking lot of Maple Street School. Contingents from local schools, Cub Scout troops, veterans groups and other community organizations marched through the streets, some playing patriotic music or displaying memorials to fallen soldiers.
Robert W. Hill III, head of Williston Northampton School, delivered an address to the assembled residents, veterans and active service personnel at the parade’s terminus.
“Both towns and schools tend not to forget the sacrifices of those who have made our lives today possible,” said Hill. “We think of those in our presence whose loved ones are in harm’s way.”
Hill said the school last summer awarded a diploma in memoriam to a South Hadley man whose education was interrupted when he joined the Air Force in 1956. He was killed flying a supply mission to American troops during the Vietnam War.
“I’ve read, recently, a lament that some areas of the country lose sight of the purpose of Memorial Day, where commercials for holiday sales seem to trump the essence of the holiday itself,” he said. “But the parade today, the dedication of the participants and the appreciation of the spectators tells me that Easthampton knows how to throw a Memorial Day parade.”
View full sizeTwo men serving in the Army stand to receive an ovation from the crowd at the ceremony following Monday's Memorial Day parade in Easthampton.Walter Sliz, chaplain of the American Legion Post #224, read a tribute to “our heroic dead.”
“They fought a thousand battles on land, sea and air,” said Sliz. “Under the quiet sod and beneath the murmuring waves, their bodies sleep in peace, but in the destinies of veterans, their souls go marching on.”
The Easthampton High School band played the fight songs of all five military branches. Veterans and active service personnel stood when their branches’ songs were played.
The crowd was also invited to call out the names of any loved ones in the military, past or present.
“Let us pledge ... an oath of patriotic service,” said Sliz. “Let us make ourselves the friends, the brother, son and father of those who will not see their own in mortal flesh.”
The war memorials on the library lawn are surrounded by 100 American flags acquired over the years, representing each Easthampton resident killed in the service. Last year, the American Legion took flags from the city’s cemeteries, but they found one they couldn’t match with a grave.
It will be brought to the memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field on September 11, 2001.