Veterans Parade Planned In Havre de Grace For 2019

HAVRE DE GRACE, MD — The city of Havre de Grace is doing something different for Veterans Day this year. Traditionally, it has hosted ceremonies at Tydings Park and Angel Hill Cemetery.

Instead, this year the Joseph L. Davis American Legion Post 47 is sponsoring the Veterans Day Parade.

Councilman Jason Robertson, a veteran of the U.S. Army, pitched the Veterans Day Parade idea to the Havre de Grace City Council.

"We feel like for Veterans Day and Memorial Day, they're the exact same ceremony," Robertson said, speaking on behalf of the Joseph L. Davis American Legion Post 47. For both holidays, he said people placed wreaths or flags on monuments and gravestones.

"That's a wonderful thing, which is very much in the character of what Memorial Day should be about because you're honoring those who have fought and died in service," Robertson said.

"Veterans Day is a very different holiday," he added. "We're trying to differentiate the two events."

Memorial Day was officially established as a holiday by the federal government in 1971, but it had its roots as "Decoration Day" in the springtime months after the Civil War, when families adorned the graves of their loved ones with flowers. It honors those who died serving the country.

Veterans Day was first recognized as "Armistice Day" in 1919 after World War I. The idea is "to honor America's veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good," according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"We're trying to differentiate the two events because we want to make it clear that we recognize the service of those who have gone on before," Robertson said, pitching the parade to the city council, "but we also want to honor the living vets in some form or fashion."

There was no Veterans Day parade in the local area, he noted, at the council's Sept. 16 meeting.

The parade proposal passed by a vote of 4-2.

The nay votes came from Council President David Glenn and Councilman David Martin.

Tradition Is Changing

Glenn said he did not oppose the parade but was concerned about canceling the ceremonies.

"While I don't really dispute the concept of a parade, I'm struggling with the concept of canceling all the previous activities," Glenn said. "I keep going back to that infamous day when I led the effort to cancel the carnival on the Fourth of July, and I did so at that time for public safety reasons."

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The Havre de Grace Fourth of July festivities used to include a carnival at Tydings Park. After 2016, that changed. At the time, officials said there were challenges to public safety but did not get into specifics. Three years later, Glenn said exactly what he attributed the change to — a death.

"We all know that an individual went into cardiac arrest. Because of the traffic [and] the people in the streets, they couldn't get to him, and the first responders had to run three-and-a-half blocks to do CPR to save him, and it didn't work out that way," Glenn said of what transpired in 2016.

"I was constantly told, you know, 'The carnival is tradition, and you don't want to mess with tradition,'" Glenn said. "And I'm concerned that by proposing this the way we're proposing it, we might get the same feedback."

He said he would be more inclined to vote for having a parade as well as a ceremony. "We don't have to have the ceremony the way we did in the past," he said, "but it gave everybody a meeting place."

Veterans Day Parade, Lunch, Film Planned

The 2019 Havre de Grace Veterans Day Parade will start at 11 a.m. on Monday. It is one of three events planned for the day in the city.

Staging for the Havre de Grace Veterans Day Parade will be at Hutchins Park.

The parade route will travel from Congress Avenue to Washington Street to Saint John Street, where the American Legion is located.

Robertson said he heard from multiple people they missed having parades on Washington Street.

The parade will be followed by a luncheon at the American Legion that is open to all at 501 Saint John Street.

The Havre de Grace Arts Collective will present "The Big Parade" on the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day at 6 p.m. Monday at the Cultural Center at the Opera House at 121 North Union Avenue.