Post-pandemic Memorial Day parade ran gamut of emotion from solemnity to joy

THE GREATEST GENERATION: World War II Navy veteran Ralph Brown is assisted by fellow Navy veteran Shawn Booth as they prepare to lay a wreath for Navy war dead during Monday's Memorial Day observance at the Rochester Common. (Rochester Voice photos)

ROCHESTER - When retired Marine Lt. Col. Joseph Kenney joined the Marines and was preparing to go overseas to fight in the Persian Gulf War, his superiors advised him get all his belonging and put them in a storage locker, make out a will and basically be prepared to never come back.
"At the time I was thinking, 'How will I be remembered?'" Kenney said to a crowd of several hundred who attended a Memorial Day observance at the Rochester Common on Monday.

NEVER FORGET : Retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. and Executive Councilor Joseph Kenney speaks to a huge crowd at the Rochester Common, urging citizens to honor the country's war dead by keeping America free so they didn't die in vain.

Kenney, who serves on New Hampshire's Executive Council, then pivoted to a painful naming of servicemen and women from Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts who have died in the three wars that followed 9/11, many of whom were killed by roadside IEDs.
He said that 30 have died in that span from the New Hampshire, alone.
But despite the solemnity and sadness that pervades this holiday, there was also resolute joy in the air, joy to be an American, joy that Rochester was celebrating its first Memorial Day

FIRST PARADE EXCITEMENT: Layla Kammer, 6, of Rochester, who was seeing her first Memorial Day parade, points to parade participants as dad Stefan Kammer looks on.

parade in four years and under a cloudless blue sky with pleasant temps to boot.
Kenney, who graduated from Spaulding High in 1979, reminded the huge crowd of what Ronald Reagan said when he was president, that American is always just "one generation away from losing our Democracy.
"I we can pass it on, then we honored our war dead," he said.
Besides the four hundred or so who attended the wreath-laying ceremony, hundreds more lined the parade route that began at Holy Rosary Church on North Main Street, stopped at the arch bridge across from the Victory Club to honor sailors lost at sea and disbanded at the Common.
Korean War veteran Kenneth

A HUG FOR YOUR SERVICE: Korean War veteran Kenneth MacIver,of Gonic gets a hug from Hope Dearborn of Farmington during Rochester's Memorial Day Parade.

MacIver, 89, of Gonic, stood among the crowd handing out American flags to anyone who wanted one and getting lots of hugs and salutes from those around him and in the parade.
MacIver, who is a mixture of spry and shaky at the same time, is said to eat breakfast at McDonald's every day. He began his service career in the Marine Reserves before switching to the Air Force.
Asked about what Memorial Day means to him, his demeanor went suddenly wan.
"It's said," he said.
The crowd at the Common also was witness to a scare when one of the Spaulding High band members fainted and fell to the ground during a medley of American Service songs. The young woman was immediately attended to by a handful of Good Samaritans as she lay on the ground supine and motionless.
Several minutes later Spaulding Band Director Bobby Booth told The Voice she was fine.