A Silent Memorial Day

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.