WESTFIELD – Two events are slated to honor the service and sacrifice of veterans. The American Legion Post 124 will conduct a Pearl Harbor Memorial Ceremony on Saturday, Dec. 7, marking the 72nd anniversary of the Japanese attack which claimed the lives of 2,388 men and women serving in the US Navy, Army, Marine Corps, Army Air Corps and Coast Guard.
That memorial service will be conducted at 10:30 a.m. at the stone monument dedicated to COP Frank P. Wojkiewicz in the park on the south bank of the Westfield River at the Great River Bridge. Wojkiewicz, the first Westfield resident to lost his life in WWII, was serving on the USS Arizona, a battleship sunk by Japanese aircraft during the early morning attack. Wojkiewicz is entombed in the Arizona Memorial with 1,000 of his comrades.
Robert Greenleaf, a WWII Navy veteran and Pearl Harbor survivor, will be a special guest at the ceremony which will include a 21-gun salute, followed by Taps and the placing of a memorial wreath into the waters of the Westfield River.
Post 124 and all of the local veteran organizations will be represented at the event with color guards. The public is invited to attend the tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
A second event is scheduled at Stanley Park Veterans’ Memorial on Tuesday, Dec. 10. The city has been selected for the second time to be a stop in the Wreaths Across America tribute. An escort is taking the wreath from Maine to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, stopping in communities along that route.
The Wreaths Across America organization has never selected a community for a second visit. Last year 200 city residents attended the wreath laying ceremony at the Stanley Park Veterans’ Memorial. Wreaths Across American organizers appreciated the community support and decided to come through Westfield again.
Wreaths Across American was initiated by Morrill Worcester, a Maine wreath businessman, in 1992. Worcester and supporters laid 5,000 wreaths on headstones at Arlington National Cemetery. This year, Worcester has arranged for up to 100,000 wreaths to be placed on gravesites at the military cemetery in his biggest wreath-laying undertaking yet.
The nonprofit organization was founded to continue and expand the annual wreath laying ceremony.
A convoy of more than 20 trucks left Worcester Wreath Co. in the eastern Maine town of Harrington on Sunday to begin the six-day journey to the cemetery in Arlington, Va., outside Washington, the final resting place for hundreds of thousands of veterans and a tourist site that draws 4 million visitors a year. Along the way, there’ll be ceremonies at schools, veterans’ homes and in communities in Maine, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland.
“What an honor for Westfield and Stanley Park, because it’s the vets who own this memorial,” said McKean, a Vietnam-era vet who served on the Air Force Presidential Honor Guard, and was part of the burial team for J. Edgar Hoover. “To be selected for the second year in a row says a lot about our city.”
The theme for this year’s ceremony is “Come with a mission, leave with a memory” and McKean is optimistic for a large turnout, but admits a lot of external factors will play a role in the size of the crowd.
“It’s all dependent on the weather. A lot of veterans are elderly,” he said. “And it’s timing, too. The tractor trailers are coming across the state from Topsfield, and stopping in Princeton before they get to us.”
This year’s event will feature appearances by Westfield Mayor Daniel M. Knapik and State Senator Don Humason, Jr.; along with remarks from the First Lady of the State of Maine Ann LePage; Morrill Worcester, the founder of Wreaths Across America; his wife Karen, the organization’s executive director; Barb Benard, president of the American Gold Star Mothers; and eighth-grade representatives from North and South Middle Schools, Julia Visconti and Mackenzie Culver.
“I’ve done this event (the convoy) twice before, and it’s an honor to honor our fallen men and women,” said Benard, who is in her first year as president of the Gold Star Mothers. “Many of our fallen served in wars that have long gone by, and so it means a lot to their families to look at that name and see a wreath on their stone.”
McKean said that the presence of local schoolchildren had a lot to do with Westfield’s selection to be visited by the convoy for a second straight year.
“Visitors were so impressed that we had children at last year’s event,” he said. “The students who came out last year, it was really heartwarming.”
Wreaths Across America spokesperson Amber Caron pointed out Westfield’s strong penchant for volunteerism and support for the Armed Forces as part of the reasoning behind a second visit
“The organization is volunteer based,” she said. “All the cities we’re going to have invited us. We look for communities that want the wreaths.”
Caron added that Wreaths Across America often visits schools in an effort to instill an appreciation for the service of the Armed Forces and to “share the message and honor the memory.”
“The convoy functions as a really long veterans parade,” she said. “There will be eleven trucks full of wreaths, a bus full of American Gold Star families who have lost family members, as well as a Patriot Guard and a State Police escort when they cross into another state. We just want to spread our message to honor and teach.”
