PHOTOS AND VIDEO: Pottstown marks Memorial Day with parade, ceremony (2024)

POTTSTOWN — A threatened thunderstorm held back Monday morning long enough for the borough’s Memorial Day Parade and Services to be held.

Leaving from its muster point in front of the Goodwill Firehouse at High and Bailey streets, the parade made its way west along High Street, cut a right onto Manatawny Street and headed to the Veterans Island area of Memorial Park.

More than 14 fire trucks and other emergency vehicles, a sampling of classic cars, flag-bearing motorcycles, military vehicles and marching bands from Pottstown and Pottsgrove middle schools were all part of the all-American event marching down an all-American Main Street.

Crowds, smaller than some years no doubt due to the ever-present threat of rain, were nonetheless enthusiastic and appreciative.

At Memorial Park, the services organized by the Joint Veterans Council of Pottstown began by introducing Joseph Tursi, USMC, the 2024 Veteran of the Year, who told the crowd simply to remember what, and who, the holiday is really meant for.

Echoing Tursi’s sentiment, Rabbi Cynthia Kravitz of Congregation Hesed Shel Emet, offered a prayer whose theme was “We remember them.”

Montgomery County Commissioner Tom DiBello called Memorial Day “the most important holiday on the U.S. calendar.”

He quoted James Garfield, former Major General, then congressman and future U.S, president, who gave the address at the first Decoration Day celebration at Arlington National Cemetery in 1868: “We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country, they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.”

DiBello said Montgomery County provided 62,000 flags for Memorial Day and has re0-named and refocused its veterans services department to be more effective.

State Rep. Paul Friel, d-26th Dist., said “when we watch the American flag fully ascend once again, our thoughts will be with our servicemembers both lost and living — including the nearly 200,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines beyond our shores as we gather here, so ably protecting us far from home. They too join us in mourning the fallen. They too join us in celebrating our strength. And like those we remember today, they too serve in a long line of patriots who fought in places like Lexington and Concord; Gettysburg and Midway; and, more recently, Fallujah and Helmand.”

“There is no greater sacrifice than to give your life in the defense of this nation,” said state Rep. Joe Ciresi, D-146th Dist.

The day’s speaker was Robert W. Boyce, a retired submarine commander who also taught high school and was manager for a decade of the Limerick Nuclear Generating Station.

“This holiday,” said Boyce, “is not about hot dogs and hamburgers. It’s about the men and women who served this nation to their death.”

The nation, Boyce said, “is facing multiple crises” at the same time its armed forces are depleted. None of the military’s branches met their recruitment goals in the last year, he said, urging young people to join and “serve your country.”

As the ceremony came to a close, Marine Corps veteran Billy Worrell stood along among the trees and flowers of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and mournfully played “Taps.”