When I first came to Sea Cliff in 1966, I soon learned that they had a Memorial Day Parade, with bands and fire trucks and marchers including veterans, children, adults and everyone in between. But I never went to the parade. Until, in 1985, a wonderful writer at Newsday, Leslie Hanscom, wrote a piece called "A Memorial Day for Memorial Days Past." He described growing up in Maine where they had memorial day parades each year, which he attended as a child. He had recently gone back to Maine and was disheartened that the parade in his town was no longer held. That year, I went to the Sea Cliff Memorial Day Parade, and every year since. Well this year there was no parade, of course. But that didn't stop me. I walked the parade route all alone, and photographed each of the memorials in Sea Cliff, where the parade stops each year. So this flag draped statue is dedicated to John Henry Geohegan, who went to fight the war in Cuba and died at 21, in 1898.
This rock with two bronze plaques, at the edge of a park with baseball fields, is a memorial to all who served in the Army and the Navy in WW I. There are 164 names on this plaque.
The parade always stops at this memorial at the firehouse, for the departed members of the Sea Cliff Volunteer Fire Department.
And this monument, overlooking Long Island Sound, is where the parade starts off each year. The three plaques honor the veterans who lost their lives in WW II in the center, the Korean War on the left, and the Vietnam War on the right. At this memorial I saw another older man enter the park and come over to this memorial, and spend time reading names. So there were at least two of us who set about remembering those lost in all the wars.
3 comments:
Thank you for walking the parade route and sharing all of the wonderful memorials in Sea Cliff.
Joan
What a wonderful idea to walk the Parade Route. I remember when we stopped at the monument overlooking Long Island Sound on a day we visited. I really missed my small local parade. The Honor Guard, some service men and women, Fire & Police Departments, local businesses, Girl and Boy Scouts...It's just a nice way to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. betsey
The blog photos were moving and a nice way to honor the fallen veterans on Memorial Day. It makes me think of how these individuals who may have gone to far places in the world to battle and die grew up in this small community of families, schools, churches, parks they played in as children, family owned stores they bought candy and toys from etc. It is sweet and tragic. It was interesting to see how Sea Cliff memorialized those in the different wars and the firemen. As I was looking at detail in the pictures, I was looking at the tree near the rock memorial and it looked as though someone carved a faint image of a solider in the tree between the two knots in the tree. Is that actually there or is it just growth of lines on the tree? Trace
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