VERGENNES — Memorial Day this year is observed on Monday, May 29. The American Legion Post 14, sponsor of the parade for 50 years, and one of the organizers for 40, has announced that the theme of this year’s Vergennes parade is “Service, Honor, Sacrifice.”
“This is a real community affair,” say Henry Broughton, a member of the Vergennes Memorial Day Committee. The parade attracts as many as 10,000 people each year.
The parade, which steps off at 11 a.m. from Vergennes Union High School, is expected to be about two miles long and will feature 11 bands. There will be all kinds of floats, according to Broughton, as well as fire departments and everything else that makes a parade.
Cash prizes will be awarded for floats, and Broughton remarks that any groups interested in entering the parade should plan their float in accordance with the parade’s theme. To register a float get a form at the Legion.
The parade marshal this year is World War II veteran Ron Hadley (read his story here).
As part of the American Legion Auxiliary program on the city green, Kristin DeGraaf, a local resident and junior at Rice High School, will read “In Flanders Field” and Mason Charlebois, a Vergennes Union High School junior, will read the “Gettysburg Address.”
Vergennes Mayor Mike Daniels and other dignitaries will be in attendance, and Victor Nuovo of Middlebury College and a Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College at Oxford, England, will be the guest speaker.
Following the services at the end of the parade the American Legion will hold their annual chicken barbeque, to which the public is invited.