Vernon's 2023 Memorial Day Grand Marshal Built His Own Vietnam Wall

VERNON, CT — The grand marshal for the 2023 Vernon of Vernon's Memorial Day parade is known for fashioning his own Vietnam wall near another local military landmark.

On Monday, the parade is slated to step off at 10:15 a.m. after a brief ceremony at Grove Hill Cemetery. The parade travels from Hale Street near the cemetery to Grove Street, to East Main Street and into downtown Rockville.

The parade then ends at St. Bernard Church with those taking part in the Central Park monument ceremony continuing to the park in front of Vernon Town Hall.

The grand marshal for 2023 is Vernon resident and Vietnam War veteran Edward King, who built a stone wall at Henry Park to honor his fellow soldiers who did not return from Vietnam.

He was a radio operator with the 25th Infantry Division. Fittingly, about four years ago. King took stones from the site of a project to install a state-of-the-art communications tower used for the local public safety complexes and built a wall adjacent to the Fox Hill tower memorial.

King usually places 13 flags atop the wall to commemorate the original 13 colonies and "our first veterans" on special occasions like Memorial Day.

The Rockville High School and Vernon Center Middle School bands will march in the parade, along with veterans, firefighters, scouts and others. A Connecticut Air National Guard flyover has been requested and is dependent on the day’s weather.

The first local ceremony is slated for Thursday at Grove Hill Cemetery. The Alden Skinner Camp of the Sons of Union Veterans will place flags at the grave of Civil War veterans at the cemetery beginning at 6 p.m at 7 p.m., the camp will conduct a brief memorial service at the grave of Col.
Thomas Burpee, a Vernon man and commander of the 21st Connecticut Volunteers, who was fatally wounded by a Rebel sharpshooter at the Battle of Cold Harbor and died on June 9, 1864. The ceremony will include Civil War re-enactors firing a salute, a wreath laying at Burpee’s grave, and a reading of the names of Vernon and Rockville Civil War veterans. (For more information about the museum, follow www.newenglandcivilwarmuseum.com)

On Sunday, what is perhaps Connecticut’s shortest Memorial Day parade will step off from
Talcottville Church, 10 Elm Hill Road in Vernon, and travel the short distance to Mount Hope Cemetery. The parade begins at 9 a.m. and includes vintage cars, fife and drum corps and anyone who’d like to march. People join in and are part of the parade rather than stand along the sidelines and watch. The ceremony at the cemetery includes a recitation of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The parade forms up at 8:30 a.m. in the church parking lot.