Memorial Parade biggest since Covid-19

Hundreds, including veterans, firefighters, police officers, religious leaders and school children, marched along Park Avenue in Long Beach on a sun-splashed Memorial Day morning, remembering those who have fallen in America’s wars, in the biggest such parade in the city since the Covid pandemic began in 2020.

They remembered the lost, and they hoped for a summer free of covid, as the beaches opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony over the weekend.

Peggy Costigan, president of American Legion’s Ladies Auxiliary, offered a stirring rendition of the National Anthem, after the throngs of marchers wound their way from Ohio and Beech Street in the West End, to a makeshift stage across the street from City Hall.

The crowds on Park Avenue were cheerful, but somber, with many saying it was a solemn day, not just one for a barbecue and the beach.

Ari Brown of Cederhurst, who just won a special election to represent the 20th Assembly District, looked out at the crowd and said, “This is what America is all about. It’s imperative to reflect on what this day means, to remember those whose lives were lost.” He noted that the day was once known as Decoration Day, when people would plant flowers on the graves of soldiers killed in America’s wars. But the name changed, he noted, in the early 1970s.

There were many somber moments. Gerald Haber, commander of the American Legion Victor Murtha Post 972 in Long Beach, reminded the crowd that not all military deaths took place on the battlefield.

“More than 30,000 U.S troops have committed suicide,” he said, referring to a new study that said those deaths were among active-duty personnel and veterans of the post 9/11 wars.

Jackie Ervolina, of Post 972, had a group of young women each read a portion of “Flanders Fields,” a World War I poem by Canadian physician- Lieutenant John Mcrae.

Nassau County Legis. Denise Ford, who represents Long Beach, reminded the crowd that veterans had “missed so many holidays and celebration, and that many lie buried in foreign fields ”heroic, but alone.”

City Council member John Bendo, a Navy veteran, reminded us that “our flag is more than just cloth and ink. We should be thankful such men and women lived.”

Many, Like Alice Gonzalez, 69, of Long Beach, had come to remember veterans who had passed. She said she had been a companion for years to Leonard Barashick, a dentist in the city who had fought in the Battle of the Bulge, a brutal World War II fight in the winter of 1944-’45. She said Barashick fibbed to get into the Army, saying he was 18 when he was actually a year younger. 

They became friends, Gonzalez said, when she was showing off photos of her grandchildren at the Laurel Diner. Barashick was sitting nearby. He said, ‘My grandchildren are better looking.” They all laughed and a friendship was formed. He died in 2019 in a Long Beach nursing home, she said. 

“I will always come to Memorial Day parades to honor him,” Gonzalez said.

Robert Ernst Koehler, 84, an Army veteran from the 1950s and early '60s, wanted to march in the parade but said his leg was hurting him too much. He stood in Kennedy Plaza, watching the parade go by.

“I go to all of the events, Flag Day, Pearl Harbor day,” he said, “They’re all sad days."