Veterans Day 2020

11 November 2020

 Since the mid-nineties, when R’el played flute in the Lexington High School band, Jim and I have attended the town Veterans’ Day celebrations: a parade with marching band, Minutemen, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and veterans waving from the front seats of cars. The program always includes a few high school students reading their winning essays about veteran grandfathers and patriotism. Even after Sam graduated, we kept the tradition, walking to the town center and waving to the LHS band director as he marched smartly down Mass. Ave.

I’m still not used to the covid world. This morning I asked Jim if he was going with me to the parade. I don’t think there’ll be one, he said. Right. Yet again I pictured life the way it’s always been.

The high school students read their winning essays online and in the afternoon a motor vehicle parade drove down Mass. Ave from East Lexington.

I walked to St. Brigid’s parking lot, the endpoint of the parade, about ¼ mile from our house, then continued up Mass. Ave to the Battlegreen. There I sat on the grass awaiting the first car. As its veteran passenger came into view, my eyes inexpectedly filled with tears. I hadn’t been thinking of David, but there he was.

David was a veteran for about a month. He was honorably discharged six weeks before he died. He got a lovely 11x14 Certificate of Retirement. Funny, I’ve never actually read it:

CERTIFICATE OF RETIREMENT

FROM THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATE OF AMERICA

TO ALL WHO SHALL SEE THESE PRESENTS, GREETING:

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT

SPECIALIST DAVID H. JOHNSTON

HAVING SERVED FAITHFULLY AND HONORABLY

WAS RETIRED FROM THE

UNITED STATES ARMY

                        ON THE 29TH DAY OF JUNE 2015

GENERAL, UNITED STATE ARMY

CHIEF OF STAFF

David also received a Certificate of Appreciation, signed by Barack Obama, Commander in Chief.

I’m happy for all those veterans who have enjoyed lives full of children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. Happy to stand on the corner of the Battlegreen and wave as their motorcade passes by on a seventy-degree day in mid-November.

And grateful to have stood at Mass. Ave all those many years, including the four that saw an earnest boy in glasses playing the clarinet while marching in time to the “Armed Forces Medley.”

Happy Veterans’ Day.