Monday, May 25, 2009
Photo
Firefighter/EMT Lee Ann Setser places a flag during the Memorial Day services Sunday afternoon in McDonald.
Says approach reduces Memorial Day’s impact
By JORDAN COHEN
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
MCDONALD — The three-day Memorial Day weekend has become more of a festive occasion than a solemn one, and that’s precisely what’s wrong with it, said the keynote speaker at the village’s annual Memorial Day ceremony.
“It should return to its traditional day of observance,” said retired Lt. Col. Genevieve Germaniuk before more than 60 people at Woodland Park on Sunday.
Germaniuk, a 26-year veteran of the U.S. Army Reserves, said the holiday atmosphere “undermined the very meaning of the day.”
She quoted a warning from the Veterans of Foreign Wars that placing the holiday in the context of a three-day weekend “makes it all easier to be distracted.”
Germaniuk’s speech concentrated on the original intent of Memorial Day to permanently honor soldiers and sailors who fought and died in America’s wars.
“I wanted it to be a history lesson,” she said.
A monument at the park contains the names of 19 McDonald residents who were either killed in action or died from noncombat causes in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. As Mayor Glen Holmes recited their names and the circumstances behind each death, members of the fire department placed flags in a circle for each of the 19.
“We haven’t lost anyone in Iraq or Afghanistan, thank God,” said Terri Kish, a fire department emergency medical technician and one of the organizers of Sunday’s ceremony.
Kish’s husband, Nicholas, a captain in the fire department, called Memorial Day “sacred with the visible presence of those who have gone before us.”
He asked residents to renew their pledges of loyalty to country and flag.
Holmes asked veterans in the audience to raise their hands and step forward. As they did, the crowd responded with sustained applause. Among the veterans was Gerald Banyo, 66, who spent more than six months in military hospitals after being seriously wounded in Vietnam. Banyo, who is disabled, laid a wreath at the monument.
“Thank you for our existing liberty and our freedoms,” Holmes said.