Waynesburg celebrates Veterans Day early with parade, patriotic speeches
WAYNESBURG – The American way of life is precious, fragile and poorly understood, and that’s why someone has to protect it. That’s what retired Lt. Col. Kristin Drach told a crowd assembled for the annual Veterans Day parade Saturday in Waynesburg.
“Democracy is still an experiment, and we have to protect it from those who want to make it fail,” Drach said during a brief ceremony held on the Greene County Courthouse steps.
Tom Boyd, parade chairman with the Greene County Veterans Council, thanked the people for attending, noting that people who attend veterans’ observances are “a dying breed.”
Boyd said Drach is a 28-year Army veteran who saw action in Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s and in the Balkans a few years later. She now lives near Sycamore in Greene County.
Her experiences overseas have given her firsthand knowledge of life without freedom, she said.
“Many of the people in the world will never have expectations of casting a vote in an election,” she said. “They have no access to an impartial court system.”
Still, people everywhere are in awe of America, she said.
“When the American forces arrived, they earned respect,” she said. “America represents an idea: freedom, the inalienable right.”
About 45 million people have served in the American armed forces, she said, with more than 1 million currently serving overseas.
“The soldiers are wearing a U.S. flag stitched to his or her sleeve, and that flag represents hope,” she said. “It is the embodiment of a better way of life for all people.”
Several local veterans’ organizations participated in the color guard and the 21-gun salute that followed Drach’s speech.
Dr. Bruce Barnett, representing the Cornerstone Genealogical Society, listed the names of 12 veterans from the Revolutionary War, Civil War and World War II who will be honored with Memory Medallions. Ann Phipps of Waynesburg sang the national anthem.
The parade included performances by the Carmichaels Area High School, Waynesburg Central High School and Margaret Bell Miller Middle School marching bands, as well as several Scout troops, the Pennsylvania National Guard and the Order of the Purple Heart.