Beverly's First Warrior Weekend A 'Wild' Success

BEVERLY, MA — Storm clouds on Saturday gave way to a spectacular Sunday of military apparatus, veterans' services and fun, family activities as the inaugural Warrior Weekend drew thousands to Beverly High School.

Beverly Veterans Agent David Perinchief told Patch that the feedback he's gotten on the initial festival was so positive — some needed traffic and parking refinement notwithstanding — that he has already begun envisioning building up the two-day event to celebrate military service and draw visitors to the city next year.

"It was wild," he told Patch. "It was beyond the expectations that everybody had. A lot of the assets that came this year, those in charge of them just said to me to put in the paperwork and we'll come again next year.

"The groundwork has been laid."

That was Perinchief's hope for the first event that he said he hopes will develop into a "mini Fleet Week" on the North Shore the week before Memorial Day each year. The idea being to arrange a major event around military service one weekend when everyone was available so they can go to cities and towns across the state next week for individual Memorial Day weekend services, parades and ceremonies, or so veterans and their families can simply spend a long weekend relaxing together.

He said the apparatus — which included tanks, howitzers, and Apache and U.S. Coast Guard aircraft — were a hit with everybody, while the reptile shows, martial arts exhibitions and reenactments were big with families, and veterans' services groups like the Veterans Affairs Administration was able to connect with many veterans on support and health services available to them.

"It was an across-the-board spectrum of people," he said. "I got emails from people saying they were able to get their grandfather out to come, and he hasn't done anything in months, so the whole family was able to get out together."

Saturday's rain was an unavoidable hurdle with Perinchief saying that the day started strong in the morning before torrential downpours forced an early closing in the afternoon. But he said Sunday's crowds more than made up for any disappointment in the first afternoon.

"At one point I looked at just the Rain Forest Reptiles with 30 kids right in front with their parents," he said. "So that's 75 people just around the reptiles. At the helicopters, there was an
endless of people."

He allowed that one area that needs improvement is traffic flow where getting visitors to park at an alternative lot at Cummings Park was not as successful as it needed to be and that it created bottlenecks.

"We're going to have to work on a lot more signage next year," he said.

But, on the whole, the debut virtually ensured there will be a next year — and, hopefully, many more years to come after that — for Warrior Weekend in Beverly.

"We've started something new," he said. "We've got something that is going to be a staple that people are going to want to keep coming back to see."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)