>American Legion Post 53 hosts Memorial Day Ceremony
(Ridgewood- NJ) American Legion Commander Bob Paoli and Post 53 will be hosting the traditional Memorial Day ceremony at Van Neste Square at 11 a.m. today . Speakers include two daughters of a Medal of Honor recipient, Elizabeth Evans and her sister, Janice Brazil, the daughters of Master Sgt. Charles Hosking. Councilwoman Bernadette Walsh will also speak and David Cunningham, a senior at Ridgewood High School (RHS), who will read an essay he wrote titled “What Americanism Means to Me.”
All the names of all 113 Ridgewood residents who were killed during wartime from as far back as the Spanish-American War through Vietnam War will be read by Ridgewood teen-agers who were candidates for military academies, including Cunningham, Aaden Cannon, Victor Ladd, Frank Paleno and Ben Rogers, as well as two Eagle Scout candidates from Ridgewood, Marshall Bronfin and Christian Pajusi.
The “Taps” salute will be played with dual trumpets, Cunningham and Kenneth Marshall, a student at GW Middle School . The ceremony will open with an invocation by the Rev. Robert Minor from Grace Church, and the benediction will be offered by the Rev. Harry Green III, a Ridgewood resident also a veteran who leads a Unitarian congregation in Rockland County, N.Y.
The RHS Band directed by Jeff Haas, will be performing all the music and the National Anthem will be sung by Nick Moreth. Twenty local organizations will be donating wreathes for the Memorial Park at Van Neste Square with Mark Steppe, who served twice in Iraq, and his wife, Amy, a former Marine presenting the wreath for the American Legion Post 53.
