Memorial Day brought out many emotions

FALLS VILLAGE — On a beautiful morning, Falls Village residents gathered on the Green to honor the nation’s fallen veterans.

The parade was brisk and efficient. A youngster on a bicycle preceded the color guard by about 30 yards, seemingly unaware he was the de facto advance man.

Jeremy Downs and Scott Jasmine received the flag from First Selectman Pat Mechare and ran it up the flag pole, then lowered it to half mast.

Memorial Day is important, said Bishop Cyril Wismar in his invocation, “lest we forget those who left these happy hills� to fight for the nation.

Selectman Chuck Lewis announced that Cookie Kubarek was awarded the 2010 Community Service Award.

Kubarek, who has just retired as head librarian at the D.M. Hunt Library, accepted the award and quipped, “For the first time in my life I am actually speechless.�

Betty Tyburski of Twin Lakes, a former Falls Village resident and a historian, tends to the graves of the town’s veterans. She was introduced by Mechare: Despite making her home in a neighboring town now, “Truth be told, she will always be a Falls Villager.�

In her address, Tyburski said the town has 167 veterans buried in seven cemeteries: Music Mountain, Lower City, Root-Gillette, Undermountain, Sand Hill, St. Patrick’s and Grassy Hill.

They include Solomon G. Hayward, a member of the Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery (known as “The Heaviesâ€�). Buried in Sand Hill, he participated in the Civil War battles of Cold Harbor and Petersburg, Va.; was taken prisoner at Cedar Creek, Va.; and was taken to an infamous prison in Salisbury,  N.C. — built to house 3,000 prisoners. When Hayward arrived, there were 10,000 under guard, mostly starving. Hayward lasted four months before he died.

“To those men from the past, and to the men and women today serving in our military, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, we give our heartfelt thanks and convey our deepest respect for their establishing, protecting and preserving our American birthright of freedom and liberty,� concluded Tyburski.

Wreaths were laid at the War Memorial by the Volunteer Fire Department and Ladies Auxiliary, and Selectman Peter Lawson (with Tyburski) placed a third wreath in honor of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, including Evan Hunter Gillette, a young man who had traced his family’s line to the grave of a Revolutionary War veteran in the Root-Gillette Cemetery — and who now has a marker of his own in the quiet graveyard he helped to reclaim from years of neglect. Gillette’s parents, Eleanor and Earl, attended the Memorial Day ceremony Monday.

Lawson said of Root-Gillette Cemetery, “I look at it as our version of Arlington National Cemetery.�

After the playing of “Taps,� most of the crowd adjourned to the firehouse for refreshments.

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