PORTVILLE — In Monday afternoon’s bright sunlight at Chestnut Hill Cemetery, the commander of the Portville American Legion gave thanks during the Memorial Day ceremony.
His thanks was to the community members — numbered in the hundreds — who turned out to pay their respects and honor those who laid down their lives for American freedom. They were gathered on the hillside leading up to the cemetery and thronged along the annual parade route through the village.
“From the bottom of my heart, I want you to know how much it means to us to have you all here today,” Wayne Myers said.
The Memorial Day activities began with the parade, led by a police unit and the Color Guard of the Legion. There were youth baseball teams, fire trucks and EMS units, the Portville Central School band, the Twin Tiers Community Band, Shriners go-karts and other units. The parade passed the foot of the cemetery, where community members then gathered for the Legion’s ceremony.
Legion Chaplain Ron Moore also gave thanks early in the program — thanks for a break from the rain during what has been a wet spring. But he also seriously noted that 81,000 American servicemen are still missing in action or prisoners of war and he asked for “the Good Lord’s help” in bringing them home.
Joe Keary, adjutant at the Legion who retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel and after 31 years of service, was the featured speaker. He served as a laboratory manager for both the Veterans Administration and Army Medical Department during his career.
He thanked all those present for participating in Memorial Day, “one the most sacred and solemn days of our national calendar.”
He stressed the day is not for finding the best consumer sales or the kickoff odf the summer season, “but rather it is a day etched in the hearts of our country, a time we pause to reflect and remember the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to and in the defense of our nation.
“It is also a day for gratitude,” Keary said, “a deep, enduring gratitude for those who laid down their lives so that we may live ours in freedom. Each name etched in a burial monument, each flag placed at a gravestone, each tear shed by a loved one needs to be a constant reminder that freedom is never free. It is paid for with courage, with sacrifice and, yes, with blood.”
Keary said the nation is “forever indebted to those who answered the call and did not come home alive. They are heroes not only in their deaths but also in how they lived and in what they stood for.”
He said that as members of the American Legion and the Legion family, “we are bound by service, past and present, and by a deep understanding and appreciation of what it means to serve something greater than ourselves. We carry the memories of our brothers and sisters, not only in ceremonies like this one, but in our daily lives, in how we serve and support our communities, how we mentor the next generations and how we continue to defend and promote the values that they died to protect.
“As we stand here together I ask that we do more than remember them,” Keary said. “Let us resolve to live our lives worthy of their sacrifice.”
He urged the following of principles that give honor to those who sacrificed — “liberty, unity, integrity and, yes, justice,” while he encouraged reaching out to veterans who carry the visible and invisible wounds of war as well as supporting their families.
“And let us teach our children that Memorial Day is not just a holiday, but that it is a holy day,” Keary said.
Gene Lewis, a veteran of the Vietnam War era, then read several names of Portville residents who served and gave their lives in the Armed Forces, from World War I and II to the Korean War and Afghanistan, ringing a bell after saying each name.
Lewis ended with Michael McGreevy, the U.S. Navy lieutenant and SEAL team member who was killed in Afghanistan June 28, 2005.
