CARIBOU, Maine — Over one hundred veterans and their families gathered Monday at the Northern Maine Veterans Cemetery in Caribou for the facility’s 15th annual Memorial Day ceremony. Speakers received standing ovations after giving moving accounts of their time at war, and the collective impact of sacrifices made for the United States.
“Memorial Day has never been a good day to me,” said Keynote Speaker Gregory LaFrance, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and CEO of The Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle.
It’s a solemn time, and a day that makes him feel “small, guilty, and most of all indebted to the great men and women who’ve done so much for so many they don’t know,” he added.
He shared an anecdote about his time as a young captain in Korea, and how surprised he was by the acceptance from locals.
“Older Korean folks came up to and wanted to touch my arm, shake my hand, and invited me into restaurants to provide meals,” he said. “It was very powerful. I knew they weren’t grateful to me, but to my country, to a nation that sent its young into battle so they could be free of oppression.”
He added that many Korean youth, on the other hand, were at best apathetic, and some even held demonstrations “demanding us out of the peninsula.”
LaFrancois said this is a luxury that South Korean youth, 50 years later, now have because they “never lived under oppression,” adding that he wondered, shortly before the Sept. 11 attack, if the youth of America would stand up, and “follow in the footsteps of those great Americans that gave so much.”
“Shortly after we experienced terrorism on our own ground,” he continued, “they answered in spades. It’s amazing to see the American spirit rise up and say ‘enough is enough.’ I suspect we’ll always do it.”
He then referred to a picture that his son, who also is in the military, sent him from Afghanistan.
“One of my favorite pictures of my oldest son is him on a hilltop, surrounded by a couple of the finest Americans you’ll ever meet,” he said. “In the background is a village in Afghanistan, with the Afghani flag flying high, and in the foreground is my son and a small team of men clutching an ISIS flag. They went into that village, took that flag, and changed the world.”
LaFrancois found the lack of an American flag in the photo to be particularly powerful, as it shows that their efforts “were not out of a desire for glory or real estate, but to do the right thing for people in need.”
Monday’s event included opening remarks by Master of Ceremonies Gregory Daniels and an invocation by Pastor John DeFelice of Mapleton, followed by Wendell Hudson asking the audience to join him in singing the National Anthem.
NMVC Board Chairman Harry Hafford thanked everyone for coming out and indicated that the Lombard Road cemetery has a couple projects in the works, including a fifth memorial wall and the introduction of green burials, in which the body or ashes of a deceased veteran will be placed in the ground without a casket or urn.
The chairman also announced a change in the program: Sharon Campbell and Monica Hewitt, respectively representing U.S. Sen. Angus King and Rep. Bruce Poliquin, would not be making speeches and instead yielding their time to Phil Bosse, the state office representative for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who announced that he would no longer be working for the U.S. Senate.
Bosse said this would be his last official veterans ceremony as a senate staff member, a position he’s held for 22 years, and thanked his colleagues for allowing him extra time to speak. His voice shook as he shared an anecdote about his experiences with a veteran from Washburn who taught him the purpose of his job.
“The question I asked the most when I started this job was, ‘What do I do?’,” he said. “It also turns out that that is the questions myself and my colleagues get asked the most often. George, a veteran from Washburn, taught me exactly what I did.”
When he was hired by Collins in 1996, his past job experience included working as a small vehicle mechanic, a cook in a restaurant, and a seller of hobby shop supplies. Back then, he said he didn’t feel prepared for the work.
“I’d known George as a fellow Harley rider, but I didn’t know his story,” said Bosse. “He called me up one day and said Agent Orange exposed him to prostate cancer, which never became an automatic connection with veterans until later in 1997.”
When George first contacted Bosse, he was too emaciated to climb the stairs to his office, so his wife came in his stead to explain George’s condition.
“I asked her where George was, and she said he was waiting in the truck,” Bosse said, “so I went down to see him and he was quite emaciated. We were able to get him service connected benefits, and money to adapt his house so he could go beyond the first floor.”
Just months later, Bosse said George passed away, adding that the most touching part of the ordeal was that George “wasn’t concerned about himself,” he only wanted his wife to receive the benefits after his passing, which she did.
“George taught me my job,” Bosse said.
Toward the conclusion of Monday’s ceremony and before singing, “Amazing Grace,”, Hudson told guests about the day he was drafted.
“I remember when I graduated from school, I was walking down the street where I lived,” Hudson said. “My mom was on the porch with a big envelope. She said, ‘Your running around days are over now,’ and told me it was a draft notice from the government.”
After opening the letter and reading, “Your friends and neighbors have selected you for the armed services,” Hudson recalled saying, “What did I do to them?”
“She laughed,” Hudson said of his mother, “but I’m here to tell you when I ended up getting on the plane in Presque Isle … I can remember her hanging onto the fence crying these great big tears, but I know it was her prayers that brought me home.”
He reflected on all the soldiers who didn’t get the opportunity to come home to wives and children, or to have the chance to start a life after the war, and he invited attendants to sing “Amazing Grace” with him.
“If you know the words, sing along,” he said. “If you don’t know the words, shame on you.”
The ceremony ended with Hafford and LaFrancois laying the ceremonial wreath, a 21 gun salute from the Madawaska Legion Riders, Frederick Ormezanni playing, “Taps,” and a benediction from DeFelice.
