Montclair Holds Memorial Day Ceremony; Mayor Spiller Honors Sacrifice of Local Residents – TAPinto.net
MONTCLAIR, NJ – The Township of Montclair held its annual Memorial Day ceremony on May 31 under relatively more favorable circumstances than in 2020, when the COVID-19 virus(SARS CoV-2) was still raging with a vaccine months away and outdoor face-covering rules were in effect in municipal and county parks. This previous ceremony was held virtually. This year, the ceremony was held in Edgemont Park, as it always had been before the pandemic, and attendees who were not wearing face coverings outnumbered those who did. The chilly weather, however, kept the crowd small.
Imam Kevin Dawoud of the local Masjid Al-Wadud mosque was the ceremony’s officiating cleric. He opened the ceremony with a sermon about the meaning of Memorial Day, saying that Americans had “grateful hearts” for all God has given to and done for the nation. He asked for sympathy for those who died in war would never attend their children’s weddings or live to see old age after having sacrificed their lives in war.
“We know that there is no greater sacrifice than to give one’s life,” Imam Dawoud said, “and we here to commemorate the men and women who have done so. This is what many have done. They have given their lives for their country, for the freedom and the values we hold so dear.”
Mayor Sean Spiller was the only other speaker at this ceremony, which was more scaled down than those in previous years. He began by saying that the significance of the event was to honor all American service personnel who gave their lives in war as well as those from Montclair. “Their courage and commitment have been shown during wars that have tested the resolve of our township and nation, and today we remember and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice,” he said.
Mayor Spiller took the opportunity of the day’s fiftieth anniversary as a federal holiday to speak of Memorial Day in an historical perspective as he looked back on the creation of the very monument he and other township officials stood and sat under while speaking from the island in the middle of Edgemont Park’s lake. He told the story of how Montclair residents, dealing with an earlier pandemic in the days following the armistice that ended World War I, convened at Frist Congregational Church in 1918 to plan the park and the monument, which were dedicated in 1925. He acknowledged the symmetry of the planning of the park during the Spanish flu pandemic that even now allows a safe gathering for Memorial Day in 2021 as the world slowly comes out of the COVID pandemic.
Mayor Spiller also noted that the monument’s inscription, referring to World War I as the “World War,” declares that Montclair servicemen “paid the last full measure of service and devotion” to preserve American liberty; the inscription being a failed hope that the Great War would be the last conflict in human history. But he was quick to recognize the service of residents, of what is now Montclair, in wars fought before the twentieth century. He pointed out that local residents staffed observation posts against the British along First Watchung Mountain while George Washington stayed in the old Crane Mansion for three weeks as General Lafayette made an encampment what is now Valley Road. He noted that the Essex Bridge was drilled on the present site of the Board of Education headquarters during the Civil War. He acknowledged that the efforts made by servicemen in the earlier days of the nation preserved American freedoms.
Mayor Spiller singled out distinguished servicemen in Montclair’s history. Among them were Nathaniel Crane, later an influential resident of the area, who served at the Battle of Long Island in the Revolution, and later at the Battle of Monmouth, which would force the British to change tactics, and Henry Meyer, who served in the cavalry in the Civil War and was wounded at the battle of Brandy Station n Virginia only to recover and serve with distinction at Gettysburg, then later at Petersburg, where he saved a fellow officer and sustained a gunshot wound in the back. He also honored Chapin Barr, a Marine aviator who fought German air forces to protect Allied ground troops in the final push to end the war but had been mortally wounded by the time he landed his plane, John Fikslin, who participated in the invasion of Normandy but was killed in an encampment soon after, Marck Tooker, Jr., a naval petty officer and aviator who used electronic equipment from his plane to disrupt North Korean troop movements in bad weather and won two gold stars, only to end up missing in action, and Frist Lieutenant Robert Asmuth, Jr., whose patrol was ambushed by the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam War and was killed. He urged the audience to contemplate “quiet reflection” at this and other monuments in town to consider the sacrifices of Montclair’s war dead.
“As this sacrifice continues, we must show that over a century after receiving this memorial in this park, Montclair sustains its commitment to honoring those who served the cause of freedom. Today and every day we thank them all,” Mayor Spiller said in conclusion.