Veterans Day parade draws crowd despite cold
Daniel Kim, a student at W&J College and Republic of Korea Army Veteran, is overcome with emotion as he speaks to a crowd gathered Saturday for a Veteran’s Day ceremony in Washington.
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Members of Trinity High School’s choir sing during Saturday’s Veterans Day Ceremony in Washington.
Members of the community observe Veterans Day during a Saturday ceremony in Washington.
Major General Stephen Johnson was the guest speaker at Saturday's Veterans Day service in Washington.
Gideon Bradshaw/Observer-Reporter
Members of the Washington High School marching band wait on North Franklin Street on Saturday during the Veterans Day parade.
In character as Whiskey Rebellion leader David Bradford of Houston, Jason Dille of Houstonstands alongside two “soldiers” in period costume as they prepare to join the Veterans Day parade through downtown Washington on Saturday.
A group of Civil War reenactors march up West Chestnut Street Saturday.
Members of the Ringgold High School marching band move up Main Street toward Beau Street on Saturday during the Veterans Day parade.
With nothing to protect himself from the cold but his olive-green service uniform, retired Major Gen. Stephen Johnson of Washington braved gusts of wind and a temperature that hovered just below freezing Saturday to explain the meaning of Veterans Day to a small crowd gathered nearby.
“Veterans are a visible reminder of the freedom, the economic privilege, the security and the prestige that Americans have enjoyed for over 242 years,” said Johnson, who retired in 2007 following 35 years of service in the Marine Corps. He went on to work for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. as an adviser to the army in the Balkan state of Macedonia, then spent 2010 through 2017 as “safety and security director” for Range Resources, according to a ceremony pamphlet.
“In large measure, those of you who wore a uniform in service of our country have helped to preserve our way of life through your honorable, committed and courageous service to the nation,” Johnson added. “And today we recognize your service and what it means to all of us.”
His and other luminaries’ remarks to an audience of local politicians, veterans and families were a prelude to a parade several hours later.
David Young, director of California Area High School marching band – one of seven in the parade lineup – explained his students were playing “God Bless America” and the late “Queen of Soul” Aretha Franklin’s anthem “Respect” as the band waited to start moving.
“We wanted to find an actual patriotic song because our group’s never played a patriotic song before,” Young said. “And we picked ‘Respect,’ because it has respect being very patriotic as well and remembering (Franklin) since she passed away this year.”
The parade took place exactly one day shy of the 100th anniversary of the treaty that ended World War I. Armistice Day became a solemn day of remembrance for out of the trenches in Europe, where technological innovations like machine guns, mustard gas and mass-produced munitions helped the world’s great powers turn huge swathes of the continent into an assembly-line meat grinder.
But the “War to End All Wars” failed to do so, and Congress changed the name to Veterans Day in 1954, the year after the cessation of hostilities in the Korean War and nine years after World War II. Vietnam, the Gulf War and a number of smaller conflicts that took place outside of Americans’ collective memory later joined that list.
The nearly two decades since the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been marked by industrialized and increasingly digitized mass violence overseas. Thousands of Americans have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while still more have returned physically and psychologically maimed.
Exact figures for deaths in the country’s current roster of far-flung conflicts are hard to come by, but about half a million Iraqis died as a direct or indirect result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of that country alone.
The subject of civilian casualties in U.S. wars got a book length treatment this year by journalist Nick McDonnell, who wrote early on in “The Bodies in Person” that “no one disputes” whether or not the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan killed civilians: “The dispute is over how many, why and whether the why justifies the killing.”
Nevertheless, this red, white-phosphorous and blue display of pyrotechnics abroad recently garnered an $82 billion a year increase – an amount equal to two-and-a-half times the operating budget of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania – without serious objection from either major party in Congress.
During the parade, spectators thronged the parade route on West Chestnut and Main Street to watch teenagers in anachronistic uniforms, fire trucks, veterans groups, soldiers and military hardware.
“It reminds you where your freedom came from,” said Deborah Woods of Washington as she watched the last of the marching units. “You need to appreciate your freedom.”