Bloomfield held its annual Memorial Day Parade on Monday, May 26. The unofficial first day of summer was weather-wise a very pleasant invitation to the upcoming sultry and occasionally purgatorial weather in store for township residents without recourse to a private pool or the Jersey shore.
The parade attracted a good crowd along Broad Street, from Brookside Park to the reviewing stand opposite the Civic Center. The grand marshall was life-long resident James Wollner, a Vietnam War veteran, Purple Heart recipient and author of a wartime memoir which told of his experience as a 9th Infantry Division
volunteer aboard an airboat patrolling the Mekong Delta. At the time, the use of airboats was a United States military innovation.
In his speech, Wollner said that to him Memorial Day is “the most sacred and solemn day in our country’s history,” He premised his speech on President Ronald Reagan’s 1982 Memorial Day remarks at Arlington National Cemetery.
“He was speaking about those ‘who loved their countrymen enough to die for them,’” Wollner said. According to Wollner, Reagan said our first obligation as citizens to those countrymen was to recognize that freedom has a cost and is not bought cheaply. And “the willingness of some to give their lives so others might live” should never fail to evoke in us “a sense of wonder and mystery” for their sacrifice so that succeeding generations do not experience the “ugliness that war brings.”
But Wollner recognized that history was not kind and since 1982 our country has experienced both violent assaults on its freedom, and our patriotic response to these attacks. From the War of Independence to present day struggles, we must honor “those millions of martyrs who bequeath to us our 250-year-old nation.”
“There has never been a question in my mind,” he said, “and I pray in each of yours, but to honor” those who died for us. As we lay ourselves down to sleep, Wollner asked us to think of those martyrs for our freedom and to pray for them.
“May they continue to rest in peace,” he said, and to the holiday throng of Bloomfield citizens and township visitors listening, “Sleep well, knowing that there are those willing to give up their lives to protect every single one of us.”
The laying of a wreath, at the Sailors and Soldiers Monument, followed, with a 21-gun salute and the playing of taps.
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