By Jim Raftis – About 5,000 Tioga County veterans are eternally sleeping under a new red-white-blue American flag. In about 65 Tioga County cemeteries, volunteer Boy, Girl and Cub Scouts, veterans, youth, and volunteers showed respect with “Flags In” ceremonies in the days before Memorial Day.
For the second year in a row because of the pandemic and Health Department guidance, Owego will have a Patriotic Motor Vehicle Convoy. To line up vehicles, drivers may report to Convoy Chairman John Loftus from 9:30 a.m. to 9:59 am on Temple Street by the Owego Police Station. Riding In the cars, pickups, vans and Shangri-La Classic Cruizers are people from all Owego organizations, businesses, schools, churches etc. with an invited veteran or Gold Star Family.
Convoy Chairman Loftus moves the convoy at 10 a.m. sharp. Streets are south on North, east on Main, south on Ross, and west on Front and disperse on Court Street. On the Front Street west side of the Court Street Bridge, a remembrance service for Owego’s first WWII casualty and lost Navy dead. Cast into the Susquehanna River, a memorial wreath will remember Seaman First Class Delmar Dale Sibley entombed since Dec. 7, 1941, on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Glenn A. Warner Post 1371 Veterans of Foreign Wars Honor Guard will fire a rifle salute. Trumpeter Steve Palinosky will play taps.
WEBO AM FM and Facebook, thanks to owner Dave Radigan, dedicates all morning to the 153rd Memorial Day for which the veterans and public are grateful. First, only on WEBO Facebook from 8:10 a.m. to 10:20 p.m., the 53rd annual Roll Call Ceremony of Remembrance for Tioga County veterans buried in 65 cemeteries. Data provided by surveys of cemeteries 12 years ago by Chet and Anita Harding and past dozen years by the Tioga County Veterans Office. Readers are Owego Pennysaver Writer Jo Ann Walter and Tioga County Courier Owner/Editor Mary Bath Jones.
A Special Tribute will include an Owego Chaplain from the Flats celebrating Mass and Distributing Holy Communion on the English dock before those same troops fell on Omaha Beach on D-Day to an Owego mother receiving a Mother’s Day visit by two West Point Army Officers regretfully saying her Army Captain son was one of the last to be killed in the Vietnam War near the besieged city of An Loc.
For more special ways to honor Fallen Heroes and veterans on Memorial Day, contact Glenn A. Warner Post 1371 Memorial Day Chairman Jim Raftis [email protected].
