Area residents remembered the more than 20 men with Western Massachusetts ties killed in Iraq and Afghainstan.
With the memory of the recent death of Mitchell Daehling still raw, the Most Rev. Timothy McDonnell singled out the U.S. Army specialist during a Memorial Day Mass Monday at St. Michael Cemetery in Springfield.
McDonnell, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, said Daehling was “[the] latest in the long line of those who gave their lives to this country.”
Daehling, 24, was killed in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province May 14. His funeral was held Friday in his hometown of Dalton.
During Memorial Day ceremonies across Western Massachusetts speakers remembered the more than 20 local men killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 and the many who died in earlier wars.
The weekend was mostly quiet but marred by a bicycle accident that killed 22-year-old Livingstone I. H. Pangburn, a Hampshire College student. The accident is under investigation.
People celebrated with parties, picnics and Northampton’s Paradise City Arts Festival drew large crowds. But the main focus seemed to be on parades and remembering the area’s fallen soldiers in many communities including West Springfield, Easthampton and Amherst.
Before eight wives, mothers and sisters of fallen soldiers killed in different wars placed wreaths on war monuments in Chicopee, Retired Army Lt. Gen. David Valcourt thanked residents of his hometown for coming out to remember fallen soldiers and thank those who are serving today.
“There is no free chicken and today we are here to remember those who paid the bill,” Valcourt said.
He listed the names of the five men from Chicopee most recently killed in war: Marine Capt. John W. Maloney, 36, who died in Iraq in 2005; Army Spc. Christopher Wilson, 24, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2007; Army Staff Sgt. Daniel A. Newsome, 27, who died in Iraq in 2007, Army Master Sgt. Kevin Dupont, 52, a Chicopee native who later moved to Belchertown, who died in 2009 from wounds he received in Afghanistan and Marine Cpl. Christopher Belchik, 30, who died in August 2004 in Iraq. Belchik lived in Illinois but some family members live in Chicopee and attend the parade every year in his honor.
In South Hadley, a parade that featured a Blue Star Mother float wound up at Town Hall, where Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts put wreaths at granite markers to the town’s war dead.
A Blue Star mother is one with a child in active service in the military. Mary Ann Donze rode on a float with a sign that identified her as the mother of Marine Pfc. Dylan Donze.
Few events are like Memorial Day with its mixture of sadness and celebration, said Capt. David M. Gardner of the U.S. Coast Guard, to people standing on the Town Hall lawn. It’s a day of people attending barbecues and grieving the loss of loved ones killed in military service.
“But today, you’re here,” said Gardner, who served as parade marshal. “Good to see you here.”
In Deerfield, Kathleen N. Belanger remembered her son Army Sgt. Gregory Belanger, who was killed in Iraq Aug. 27, 2003, during ceremonies following the annual parade.
She said it’s imperative to “show our respect and honor the flag.”
The holiday was particularly poingant at the Massachusetts Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery in Agawam where many local veterans are burried.
Director William C. Walls Jr. greeted hundreds of visitors by welcoming them to “this hallowed ground where Memorial Day and Veterans Day are celebrated every day.”
Following the Agawam city parade, Mayor Richard A. Cohen, said remembering involves helping the families left behind.
“Nobody can replace these fallen heroes, especially in the memories of their families,” Cohen said. “Remembering the fallen once a year is not enough.”
In Northampton, veterans groups and city officials gathered for the community’s annual Memorial Day ceremony at Park Street Cemetery, where 37 Civil War veterans are buried. Their names were read in public, along with the names of 56 other veterans who died this past year in the city.
Keynote speaker Eugene C. Tacy, a city councilor and Navy veteran, maintained that the Northampton parade is the longest-running, continuous Memorial Day celebration in the country.
“This community has never taken a nonchalant attitude about Memorial Day. There’s a robust spirit that’s alive and well,” he said.
In Palmer, featured speaker State Rep. Todd M. Smola, R-Warren, asked those in attendance to thank the veterans in attendance.
“We cannot forget those who paid so terrible a price,” said Rev. Bruce Prestwood-Taylor of the Second Congregational Church. “Help us to be worthy of their sacrifice.”
Holyoke also remembered the women killed in wars.
The head of the state Disabled American Veterans Department asked a gathering of more than 200 at the Holyoke War Memorial to think about where they would be without the freedoms large and small defended by the nation’s war dead.
“They loved, and were loved, and they are missed,” department Commander Anita Reed said.
Also, she said, though women were on battle fields as nurses and in other capacities for decades, it wasn’t until 1977 that the federal government granted them veteran status in terms of securing benefits.
“If a woman was in the military and was in uniform, she is a veteran,” Reed said.
Staff writers Lori Stabile, Diane Lederman, Fred Contrada, Jim Kinney, Buffy Spencer and Mike Plaisance contributed to this story.