By JOSEPH KELLARD
The middle-school students were joined by a variety of other marching bands, including the Amityville and American Legion pipe bands and the Island Park Fire Department band, which played such patriotic tunes as "God Bless America," "The Marines' Hymn" and "Anchors Aweigh." Along with the middle school band, a submarine float created and tugged by Boy Scout Troop 312 of Island Park was another new feature in the parade.
Under sunny skies and marching past parade-goers sporting various red, white and blue or star-spangled garments, Grand Marshal Frank Eye, ex-chief of the IPFD, led the way from the parade's start at American Legion Post 1029 on Nassau Lane, down Long Beach Road to the Veterans Memorial at Waterfront Road. Eye was joined by such dignitaries as D'Amato, Mayor Jacqueline Papaptsos, state Sen. Dean Skelos, Hempstead Town Councilman Anthony Santino, Joe Ponte, vice president of the Island Park Library Board, and Mickey Hastava of the Island Park Chamber of Commerce.
Among the Island Parkers who ceremoniously laid red, white and blue carnation wreaths around the memorial were Barbara Rubin, president of the Island Park Chamber, Island Park Library Director Ronnie Swett, Gene Vandermosten, commander of Island Park Boy Scouts Troop 312, Lincoln Oren eighth-grade teacher and newly elected library board Trustee Dean Bacigalupo, and school board Trustee Michael Hastava.
The transition from the celebratory parade to a solemn ceremony began with the Oceanside Fire Department marching band's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and two firefighters' trumpeting of "Taps." The dignitaries' speeches focused on the members of the armed forces who died in defense of the nation and its ideas and values, which parade and ceremonies director and emcee John Marino, past commander of the American Legion, defined as "God, country and family."
D'Amato's words were strongest, however, as he loudly proclaimed from the podium before the memorial that the war on Islamic terrorists is a battle for civilization. "Will we allow those who say you either pray our way and who hold us and the world hostage [to defeat us]," D'Amato asked rhetorically, "or will we have the courage to follow through and to stand up and say, No one's going to tell us how to pray, no one's going to tell us that we have to look the other way while you dominate the world and attempt to make us subject to yourselves?"
D'Amato expressed his pride in the turnout for the American Legion-run parade, "because it is our way of paying tribute to those who have fallen, and just as importantly, those who serve today." The former senator added that today's soldiers "are heroes protecting us throughout the world. Thank God for them and their families."
Since last Memorial Day, some villagers have initiated successful letter-writing campaigns to the troops in Iraq. Shortly before the battle for Fallujah last November, Hope Ragan contacted the Herald about such a project for the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, the unit of her husband, Sgt. Matthew Ragan, which generated responses from Florida to Illinois. And Kathy Scheiner's third-grade class at Hegarty Elementary School became pen-pals with Keith McQue, an alumni of their school and now a specialist in Company B of the Fighting 69th, stationed in Baghdad.
Marino recalled the history of Memorial Day, which originated in May 1868 in remembrance of fallen Civil War soldiers, expanded after World War I to include those who had died in all American wars, and was declared a national holiday in 1971.
He reminded the crowd of the American men and women serving today in over 130 foreign lands, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and concluded by reading from a letter written by an American soldier in Iraq to relatives back home. "'God will reward me in the future for the sacrifice I am making,'" Marino read with an emotional lump in his throat. "'Take care, and I hope to see you in the next few months.' ... A few days after he sent this letter to his family, he was killed in action."
Papaptsos asked parade-goers to pray for the soldiers fighting on foreign soil and to ask for their safe return, and to remember the local firefighters who serve them 24/7.
"We don't say it often enough: thank you, we're proud of you," he said. The mayor, too, read from a letter, one written by U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy and published in the Oceanside/Island Park Herald.
"'This Memorial Day,'" she read, "'take the time to thank a family that has lost a loved one defending our freedom.'"
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