Paying Tribute to Bronxville's Veterans

The following is the text of the speech delivered by Bronxville Mayor Mary Marvin at the village’s 2015 Memorial Day Parade.

A warm good morning to our Veterans, clergy, distinguished colleagues and honored guests, firemen, police officers, community organizations, residents and our children. Welcome to the 95th Annual Memorial Day Parade and Ceremony. What a unique and storied place this parade holds in the history of our Village. It is so spectacularly/wonderfully small town that every year I keep waiting for Wally and The Beaver to show up.

But on a properly serious note, the last few years we have renewed our efforts to ensure that honoring our servicemen and women takes its rightful place on center stage so we do not ever take for granted those most deserving of our gratitude – and our Grand Marshall, this year, Father Peter McGeory is precisely one of those so deserving of our praise. Father, thank you for letting us honor you here today.

Born in New York City, Father McGeory was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Catholic University. He was ordained a priest by Cardinal Cooke and during his time teaching at nearby Stepinac High School, Cardinal John O’Connor recruited him into the Chaplaincy Corp.

Father McGeory spent 25 years as a Chaplain in the Navy and Marine Corps and retired in 2010 with the rank of Captain. During his military service, he lived in the Philippines, Japan, Bahrain and the United Kingdom and spent almost eight years living aboard ships.

While he was on a ship in the Persian Gulf during the Iraq-Iran War, the nearby USS Stark was hit by two Iranian missiles resulting in the immediate death of 35 crewman, two more were then lost at sea and eight died later from their wounds.

Father McGeory rushed to the aide of his colleagues on the Stark and was the only Champlain aboard to bless the dead and comfort the wounded and dying. What a time of courage and compassion.

During his many years as a military Chaplain, Father McGeory was awarded many medals and citations. Of particular pleasure was being declared an honorary classmate by two classes he ministered to while senior chaplain at the Naval Academy.

For all of his distinguished service, Father was awarded the prestigious Legion of Merit Award by both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.

Father McGeory we are so grateful to be able to honor you and we are so blessed that you now call Bronxville home.

Some ask, why have a Grand Marshall and continue to celebrate Memorial Day and its true meaning when frankly military service in 2015 seems so very far removed from our everyday lives. I read the daily inserts of those who die in combat, now only printed in a handful newspapers, and they are all kids we don’t know – most often quite young and from the Heartland.

When honoring our Veterans, politics must be set aside. Mark Twain said, “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.” Today is the proper time to reflect- are we doing enough to honor the sacrifices of those who allow us to be here today? Are we supporting those men and women who are in harms way as I speak? As FDR said, “those who have long enjoyed the freedoms we enjoy forget in time that men died to win them for us.”

During World War II, which touched this Village so personally and in many instances so profoundly and sadly, those here at home did their part in spades – not heating their homes in winter so the extra fuel could be sent overseas, donating all forms of scrap metal including ripping gutters from homes, growing victory gardens and sharing vegetables with neighbors, arranging knitting groups to make sweaters to keep our soldiers warm, assembling record breaking “Bundles for Britain” and Villagers raised more than double our national quota of liberty bonds – over $ 3 million. We need to continue this spirit of caring.

Service to country is not a one sided contract. We have a duty to care for our Veterans and their families be it medical, economic or emotional support and respect every one of them because in war, there is no unwounded soldier.

The way we treat our veterans sends a powerful message to the next generation and an equally powerful message to our active duty troops.

President Kennedy said “A Nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors” and Archibald MacLeish in the beautiful poem The Young Dead Soldier written in the voice of one of the fallen, penned “Our deaths are not ours. They are yours. They will mean what you make them mean.”

Today is a day to take time to say a prayer for and a word of gratitude to our Veterans and reflect upon virtue, what it means to have character, dignity, honor, bravery, integrity and courage.

So on this Memorial Day, may God bless the men and women protecting us today and in days past, may He comfort those who still endure the pain of loss and may He never cease to shed
His grace on the United States of America.

Thank you.

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