Every Memorial Day morning I used to visit Taftville, one of the villages that is a part of the city, Norwich, in which I reside, in Connecticut, the state in which I live. It was a small and low-key commemoration each year honoring a Taftville native who'd died in uniform usually attended by about five dozen of us who showed up at the ceremony every year. Later in the day, in Norwich proper, would be a larger gathering at Chelsea Parade which is basically across the street from my house (almost).
COVID-19 has changed how we live and how we remember so this year there is one ceremony as near as I can tell and it happens at one o'clock in the afternoon, socially distanced and appropriately face-masked at Chelsea Parade and this year will be a live feed on the city's website.
I imagine in some form you have, wherever you live across the USA, the same type of observances ahead of you today as well. This is who we are and somewhere back there in the dust is that same small town in each of us and this is how we mark Memorial Day, at least this year.
Today is when we remember large moments and the small, quiet ones. Those who led our armed forces but more especially those who served in them and gave their lives so that we could live as we do. We are more than everyone we have ever known. We are, as a nation, everyone, throughout our history, whoever said 'send me' when there was a need to free the Colonies from the Crown, to preserve the Union, to stop aggression thousands of miles away from hearth and home and to maintain constant vigilance in the face of baleful, ignorant hatred by fanatical cowards.
For the last two hundred and forty-four years, we have been a nation of ordinary people who do extraordinary deeds every day. Today is another of those days.
-bill kenny
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