Hatfield Remembers - Memorial Day 2015

Hi Blog! Monday, May 25, 2015 was Memorial Day - a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving. The holiday was originally known as Decoration Day after the American Civil War in 1868, when the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans, designated a day as the time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. It wasn't until 1967, that Congress passed a resolution which officially recognized Memorial Day as a national holiday to remember those who died in service to our country.

For many Americans, the central event is attending one of the thousands of parades held on Memorial Day in large and small cities all over the country. Most of these feature marching bands and an overall military theme with the National Guard and other servicemen participating along with veterans and military vehicles from various wars. The Hatfield Parade was no exception to this long standing tradition. Many local community organization were present - Elks, Moose, Kiwanis, but my favorite was the Ancient Order of Hibernians. What's not to love about kilts!

The crowd favorite was the civil war re-enactors. Every couple blocks they fired their guns.

The guys in the crowd liked all the cool sports cars.

The Boy Scouts were out in force.

Bikers Against Child Abuse got the crowd revved up.  These are clearly not 1%'ers.

All this flag waving built up an appetite. Lucky for us, Herr's was on hand to give out free potato chips to the hungry crowd.

Here's Dave showing off his booty!

The parade came to a climax with dozens of local fire trucks all with their lights on and sirens blasting!

The crowd fell in behind the fire trucks and made their way over to the American Legion Post 933 for a remembrance ceremony.

All the local dignitaries were assembled on the band stand.

All eyes were on the American Flag as the DJ played the National Anthem.

After all the speeches, the ROTC cadets set the Missing Man Table in memory of fallen, missing, or imprisoned military service-members.

With one final salute, the crowd headed into the banquet hall for a free Memorial Day BBQ lunch. We stopped to admire the mural of the raising the flag on Iwo Jima based on the historic photograph taken on February 23, 1945, by Joe Rosenthal. 

The mural depicts five United States Marines and a United States Navy corpsman raising a U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. We thought it was very cool how an actual flag was incorporated in the mural.

We are glad we took the time to attend. We hope you all had a great Memorial Day Weekend!