BLOOMFIELD, NJ — The Bloomfield Joint Memorial Day Committee cancelled the Memorial Day Parade which was scheduled for Monday, May 30. With a storm headed in from the south, a dire but inaccurate weather forecast for northern New Jersey prompted the cancellation decision to be made early Sunday evening. The parade was to begin at 9 a.m. and march south from Hoover Avenue to the Civic Center. A disappointed Joe Ellmer, the parade committee chairman, said he felt terrible about the cancellation.
“With the weather forecast on Sunday for a storm on Monday, we had a get-together and canceled it,” Ellmer said in a telephone interview Tuesday morning. “Unfortunately, we didn’t get the storm.”
According to Ellmer, he made the decision along with Mike Sceurman, the director of the Bloomfield Recreation Department, and representatives of a number of Bloomfield veteran organizations.
Ellmer said he has been involved with organizing the parade for at least 20 years and could not remember another time the parade committee called one off. He did, however, say it was canceled by the Bloomfield Police Department about 12 years ago because of the threat of lightning and thunder.
“Next year, I think, in case of rain, we’ll have a ceremony at the Civic Center or the high school,” Ellmer said. “We wouldn’t have a parade but we will still have a ceremony. So many past years, we didn’t have a cancellation so we didn’t think about that.”
He said Sceurman has said a Memorial Day observation will be held during the Fourth of July celebration at Foley Field.
In a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon, Sceurman said he is thinking about a short Memorial Day commemorative, on July 4, starting at 7:30 p.m. Although he said nothing was definite yet, he thought “Taps” would be played, and the American flag at Foley Field would be taken down, folded and retired. He said he will see if the BPD could provide a 21-gun salute. And the national anthem, of course, would also be sung.
Sceurman said in the future, in the event of another Memorial Day cancellation, perhaps an appropriate ceremony could be held in the Civic Center of the high school.
“It’s never easy to make that call,” he said about canceling an event. “We made the decision Sunday. There were dozens of organizations involved. We thought it was best to get the word out Sunday night. Unfortunately, the forecast was wrong. But earlier, there was a forecast of flooding and over an inch of rain. The one thing you can’t control is the weather.”
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