Memorial Day Weekend 2012 began on a sobering note Saturday, May 26 with a well-attended ceremony at Veteran’s Memorial Park in Chesapeake Beach. The midday ceremony served as the opening for the Twin Beach area’s Stars and Stripes Festival. The ceremony featured instrumental renderings by the U.S. Naval Academy Band Brass Quintet and the singing of the Star Spangled Banner by Huntingtown High School student Regan Hall. The Calvert County Young Marines, a five-year-old group of youths ranging in ages eight to18 performed the presentation of colors.
Chesapeake Beach Mayor Bruce Wahl noted the park includes a “Wall of Honor” for the Twin Beach area natives who served during World War II, three of whom lost their lives. The mayor spoke about the “extraordinary debt owed to the men and women in the Armed Forces who have died in combat, sustained crippling wounds or have been mentally traumatized in the line of duty. Wahl stated the nation also owes much to the families of those servicemen.
Without the wartime sacrifices, “the America we know wouldn’t be the same,” said Gen. James A. Adkins, the Maryland adjutant general, who was the ceremony’s guest speaker. “The price for peace is beyond normal reckoning.”
Adkins spoke about a letter Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to his wife, Mamie, a short time before the June 6, 1944 allied invasion of Normandy. The future president lamented the large number of casualties in the European Theater and its residual “anguish and suffering to families.” Adkins recalled the wartime losses of members of his own family. In recounting the thousands of Marylanders who have died in recent wars, Adkins concluded, “we honor them by not forgetting what they did for us.”
The Stars and Stripes Festival, a first-time event, has been organized by a 32-person committee chaired by Chesapeake Beach resident Connie O’Dell.
Highlights of the three-day event include some traditional Memorial Day Weekend occurrences and several that are happening for the first time. The Nam Knights 20th Anniversary Motorcycle Ride was scheduled for early Saturday afternoon with hundreds of bikers scheduled to travel down Route 260 and through North Beach, subsequently stopping at American Legion Post 206 for their annual picnic.
A USO show and dance was scheduled for Saturday night and Sunday’s highlights include a nonprofit organization fair at Northeast Community Center, family activities and a concert by the U.S. Navy Band Country Current at Kellam’s Field. The Town of North Beach will be hosting a “Movie on the Beach” Sunday night. The feature is “Operation Petticoat.”
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