In a morning charged with grandeur amid the sunlight dappled trees at Monument Park, Peekskill residents gathered to pay respect to those who gave their lives to defend our freedoms. In a ceremony that has been repeated through the last hundred years at that location, speeches were made, proclamations read and the names said aloud of Peekskill sons who died in battle beginning with the Civil War and ending with the Vietnam War.
Color guards and an a cappella rendition of the national anthem by American Legion Auxiliary member Patricia Cortelli, along with high school students playing patriotic songs, were featured, along with a brief lesson about the meaning of the red poppies, delivered by Dr. Karen Wallis.
Wallis introduced herself as the granddaughter of Alessio Marinelli, a World War 1 Army veteran and the daughter of Louis Marinelli, a World War II and Korean War Navy veteran. She’s a member of the American Legion Auxiliary because of the service of her father and grandfather. She explained the history of the little red paper flower that is ubiquitous around this time of year.
“From the battlefields of World War I, weary soldiers brought home the memory of a barren landscape that was transformed by the blooms of wild poppy flowers as red as the blood that had soaked the soil. By that miracle of nature, the spirit of their lost comrades lived on.”
The poppy became a symbol of the sacrifice of lives lost in war and represented the hope that none had died in vain. The poppy as a memorial flower to the war dead can be traced to Moina Michael. On an impulse, she bought a bouquet of fresh poppies and handed them to businessmen meeting at the New York YMCA, where she worked. She asked them to wear the poppy as a tribute to the fallen. That was November 1918. World War I was over but America’s sons would forever rest in “Flanders Fields” in Belgium.
According to Tim Warn, a member of the Oliver C. Chase, Jr. American Legion Post 274, before Memorial Day was moved to the last Monday in May as a national holiday, May 30 was known as Decoration Day and always observed on whatever day of the week it landed. “I read in copies of the Highland Democrat that people would take the trolley out to Hillside cemetery for a ceremony and come back into Peekskill for dinner and speakers. In 1916, when Peekskill’s Civil War monument was dedicated, ceremonies took place at Monument Park. It’s been that way ever since.”
