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Memorial Day

Category: Life

Published on Wednesday, 26 May 2010 05:00

Written by Paul Roy

While sitting behind the dirty windshield today, I was thinking about Memorial Day. There was a news story about one of our local towns cancelling their annual parade. One of the reasons given was it wasn’t worth the cost due to the lack of participation, both of marchers and spectators.

It got me wondering as to why that would be. When I was a kid, two or three years ago, I can remember the parade in my home town of Southbridge as always being a pretty big deal. Both sides of Main Street would be lined with people, all waving flags and cheering as the veterans, the Police, the Fireman (still called them that back then), all branches of the Scouts and the Southbridge and Marianhill Bands marched by (the Colies didn’t have a band). But then things were different then. These were the years not long after World War II and Korea. The Viet Nam war was just beginning and one would still see veterans from the First World War. Veterans who had served were proud of the fact, and the town citizens were proud of them.

Through the years though, participation dwindled. Veterans died and “new” ones weren’t as eager to march. After the way the country treated our returning Viet Nam vets, why would they? And as each succeeding generation passed, people forgot about the major wars and it wasn’t important any longer. My Dad was a WWII veteran, as were several of my uncles, and we heard the stories, my father always told his brothers that he won the war which could easily be proven because, as he never got tired of saying, “I went in June of ‘44, was on a destroyer heading to Japan in April ‘45, and the war ended because they knew I was coming”. How could you argue with that logic? His children and grand children know the story, but his great grandchildren probably won’t.

And because of the “Wal-​Marting” of America, Memorial Day is just another day for sales and shopping, that is if you are lucky enough to not be working. I’ll be behind the dirty windshield that day, as I am in the kind of work where there aren’t any weekends or holidays. But that’s okay, I’ll be thinking of my Dad and all the others who served our country, both in war time and in peace time.

So, thanks to all the vets out there, if it wasn’t for the things you’ve done, we wouldn’t be where we are today.