Paul Kengor: The year they didn't celebrate Memorial Day

I never miss the annual Memorial Day parade in Mercer. How could I? It’s old school, pure Americana: high-school bands, snow-cone stands, church groups, VFW, rotary club and flags, flags, flags.

This year, however, the streets were eerily empty. They were lined with flags, but no people. No one marched. That’s because Memorial Day 2020 fell amid the covid-19 pandemic. That meant no one was celebrating. The parade was canceled. And not just in little Mercer, but probably in your town as well.

A friend was involved in arranging the Memorial Day parade in Linglestown, just outside of Harrisburg. It was to be the 100th anniversary of the town’s special parade. The first had Civil War vets marching. Imagine that. They tried to find a way to make it work. The organizer told my friend: “I want to know not if we can do this, but how we can do this.” They settled for a small “socially distanced” commemoration in the town square, followed by vets riding in vehicles through neighborhoods.

It’s sad. And it’s especially sad for World War II veterans. We lose more World War II vets every year. They are a vanishing breed. Worse, they’ve been hit hard in nursing homes by covid-19. They’re leaving us quickly.

I lamented this rising loss of World War II veterans in my column last Veterans Day. I recalled one afternoon picking up my daughters from church after youth group. “Dad, we had an amazing experience,” said my oldest daughter. “We went to a nursing home. We met two people who were almost 100 years old. They remembered World War II!”

It was a nice experience for them. Of course, any of us over 30 have met people who remembered World War II — who served in World War II. Our kids, however, have not. Those veterans are a literal dying breed.

In that column, I recalled a moment a few years ago when I finally dropped in on an old-timer who lived on our street, whose house I drove by countless times. His name was Russ Post. What followed was a memorable Saturday afternoon, as Russ took my teenage son and me on a roller-coaster ride from his youth in Western Pennsylvania to the Pacific theater in World War II.

He shared searing images of what he witnessed at Saipan in the summer of 1944, when countless Japanese killed themselves in mass suicides. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Russ told my son pointedly. “Horrible. People were jumping off the cliffs, women holding their children. … That’s about as close to hell you can get. It made your head scream!”

So many of our World War II veterans lived through things like that. They lived to tell. And they’re not living much longer.

This Memorial Day 2020, Russ is no longer with us. He passed away shortly before last Memorial Day, at age 94. Ironically, he died at the nursing home my daughters had just visited.

Unfortunately, the time for kids today to meet guys like Russ is fading fast. There will not be many more Memorial Days with vets like him. It’s a shame to have missed one this year, in Mercer and so many small towns. Memorial Day 2020 wasn’t much to celebrate.