Melrose Alderman Remarks On Operation Resilient

The following was submitted by Alderman Shawn MacMaster:

As we gather on this hilltop, overlooking the gravesites of some 2,400 men and women who served in the United States Military, we end this weekend’s Memorial Day activities in fitting fashion.

The gravesites that surround us, and the sacrifice that each one represents, calls to mind the words of the poet Wordsworth, “That they kept faithful with a singleness of aim” -- and that aim being to to resist totalitarianism, to rid the world of tyrants, and to make the world safe for democracy.

In his 1951 farewell address to Congress, General McArthur immortalized those eight words taken from a British stanza, “Old soldiers never die; they simply fade away.” But here in Melrose, we refuse to let our veterans fade away only to be forgotten, for the spirit of our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Guardsmen live on in perpetuity in all that we do throughout the course of the year.

Honoring our Veterans is not something that we do once on Memorial Day and then again on Veterans Day. Honoring our Veterans is part of the very fabric of our community -- it is as much Melrose as is our Victorian ethos.

This is perhaps best evidenced by an experience just two weeks ago when I had the privilege and honor of being part of Operation Resilient -- joining twenty-four eighth grade students from the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School and several local veterans to visit the war memorials in Washington, D.C. This experience, made possible each year by the Melrose Veterans Advisory Board, allows our youth and our veterans to bond over a shared experience.

Our students, under the guidance of history teacher Lisa Lord, Colonel Robert Driscoll, and Lt. Colonel Karen Burke, spent months preparing for the operation; they conducted independent research, presented what they learned to our veterans while on the trip, debriefed and reflected on the experience when they returned home -- culminating in a school assembly for their peers and the Melrose community this past Friday.

In short, Operation Resilient was more than a field trip -- it was an operation in the truest sense of the word. A substantive and meaningful example of understanding and living local veterans’ history.

Joining us on the trip was retired United States Air Force Staff Sergeant, and Vietnam War Veteran, David Mangan, who is also with us today. Staff Sergeant Mangan visited the Vietnam War Memorial for the first time to honor his comrades and three of his friends.

And after carrying with him fifty years of pain and suffering, he arrived at the Memorial with a new group of comrades and friends by his side, just moments after the pelting rain from a sudden and stark thunderstorm had subsided -- an experience that was striking and profound in its symbolism. As if the pain of all those years had been purposely sent down from above in the form of tears, only to be greeted minutes later by the re-emergence of a garish sun, which shone its pure pleasure on that reunion of old friends.

And there Dave stood at the wall, five decades after leaving Vietnam, buttressed by the collective warmth of the sun, the presence of the students, and the solidarity of the other Veterans -- forming what seemed, ironically, like a perfectly choreographed wall in itself. But which was nothing more than the organic coalescing of a caring and supportive community.

And as much as one might like to think that humanity was solely responsible for that poignant display of support and affection, I know that it was the bonds formed by the Operation that made that moment possible. Because when Dave located the name of his lifelong best friend on the wall, Michael Guzzeti, who, after only having been in Vietnam for two weeks, was killed in action at the age of nineteen, we had already come to know PFC Michael Guzzetti as “Mikey.” We knew about the fun times that Dave and Mikey shared as sprightly children, the harmless mischief they caused as young adults, and their hopes and dreams for the future.

So in some way, the students and the others who were part of the Operation felt as if we too were visiting someone who we knew -- even though we had never met Dave or knew about Mikey before the trip.

And it’s because of that experience and everything else that we do to honor veterans over the course of the year and the ways in which we do so, that Melrose is like no other community. Beyond the parades, and flags, events, and standing memorials, our guiding principle is to know and recite their names, to tell their stories, to remember their hopes and dreams, and to honor the sacrifices they made. So to end where I began, let us recommit ourselves today to that “singleness of aim” -- to thereby ensure that the memory of all of our Veterans, especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice, will never fade away.