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HARRY O BRIGHT, DECEASED VETERAN NOMINEE

COUNCILMAN 1975-1979 Army Veteran, Ambassador to the World

JONATHON MANZUETA, GRAND MARSHALL 

White Plains Policeman and resident,

Navy Veteran,  Persian Gulf

NYPD Police Officer

WPCNR HONOR ON PARADE. By John F. Bailey. May 28, 2024:

White Plains Memorial Day Parade began the city traditional  Memorial Day recognition of American men and women who have given their lives in the nation’s wars with a march past city hall on Main Street turning up North Broadway lined with residents clapping and saluting the marchers proceeding to the  White Plains Rural Cemetary on the grounds of graves of Civil War residents of White Plains who died in that conflict.

 

WHITE PLAINS HIGH SCHOOL BAND OPENED THE CEREMONY WITH THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER

 

 

Mayor Thomas Roach began the ceremony  remembering the orgins of Memorial Day and announcing that Harry O. Bright a U.S. Army veteran, teacher, and the first African American to be elected to the White Plains Common Council, serving from 1975-1979. Mr. Bright served as the Director of the White Plains Human Rights Commission

Jonathon Manzueta,  a lifelong resident of White Plains, Grand Marshall of the Parade was honored for his service in the Navy on three tours in the Persian Gulf. His ship patrolled and defended ports and maritime ships  against Somali  pirates with his group capturing 12 during a search and rescue operation.

Upon completion of his tour of service, he enrolled in Westchester Community College to work towards his Associates Degree in Criminal Justice. Later in his career he joined the NYPD for 4-1/2 years and then transferred to the White Plains Police Department.

The Invocation and Benediction prayers presented by Debra Palazzo of Daughters of Liberty’s Legacy and Diane Travers, Women’s Auxiliary, Jewish War Veterans Post #191 reinforced the message that by honoring the men and women who gave their lives for the freedom we have today should inspire we who remember them or lost  a loved one fighting robustly for our country to dedicate our lives to service, achievement and issues that are important.

Observing this ceremony every year drives home to me the enormous debt we owe our war dead and their families and how their lives cut short by fate, but that live on as inspirations for truth, freedom and the American Way whose ultimate sacrifice made possible our nation to become the strongest and most influential society in the world by government by the people, for the people and lead by people of character who believed in that.

The commitment to that should never be lost no matter how appealing simple solutions to problems seem to be the best, how using prejudice and blaming people within the nation for problems, does not solve those problems. (It’s not shooting strikers as President Grover Cleveland did to Pullman workers.) (It’s not lynching slaves in the awful Andrew Johnson Presidency that allowed the Klu Klux Klan violence against  It takes brains, working together,  not mass rallies, not ignoring evil, not inciting violence, not jailing  your adversaries, (that’s what Hitler, Stalin, Putin, did and killed thousands too).

The leaders of America never lose awareness of what is right.  They  take responsibility. They really get things done. They want to make things better for all.  They  do hard unpopular things that anger the comfortable and the powerful because it is right. They have to be strong, and have integrity.

Let’s have some more  leaders like we used to have: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR who defeated the Nazi Horror with American arms, and banding against the Nazi war machine.

And it is sobering to note that many people in America, especially the press were against America getting into the war against Germany and Japan because they thought authoritarianism was a good thing. They admired  Nazi “order” and “growth” in the 1930s. The thinking of that time in America were isolationists whom of course the Nazis would have killed if they had defeated us in World War II.  The journalists would be the first the SS would trot before firing squads. Walter Winchell was the only journalist warning of what the Nazis were doing and what they planned. Winchell was a p.r. writer who recognized evil when he saw it. He had a great influence on FDR.

Authoritarianism is not democracy at all. It gains power by claiming to be on the people’s side. This is a big lie. Once they get in power, if you oppose, you goes. If you are reporter who exposes the truth, you go.

One thing you have to realize an authoritarian in authority tells you what to do or else. They hate freedom. They hate courts. They control them so you have no power. They care for nobody. They have no admirable qualities and no sense of humor.

Incompetent judges who toe the line is what you want when you are an authoritarian and make decisions in agreement with the policy you want enforced.  That is the first thing you do is stack the courts. Hitler did it.

A good example of that is the United States Supreme Court of today where sophistry (arguments not supported by fact)  and personal beliefs, irrational rulings (“corporations are people,” comes to mind) supported by naivete and prejudices of their own.They never read Plato’s Republic.

That court was stacked by the previous President with the cooperation of a naïve, good old boy Senate. They were not paying attention. Now we have six judges  just knocking down the constitution  amendment by amendment. That’s what a stacked court does.

As Abraham Lincoln said The Gettysburg Address over the fields of slaughter: Little Round Top, Pickett’s Charge and carnage of Americans fighting Americans:

Delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

 

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

 

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863.

 

After the Battle of Ypres in the first World War,  a man  named Alexis Helmer left a trench to check on an artillery position. On leaving the trench a shell landed next to him and he was killed instantly.  At his funeral Dr. John Mccrae his friend was moved to write this poem.

 

Cynthia Kauffman, President of Daughters of Liberty’s Legacy  after placement of poppies on the wreaths read In Flanders Fields that has endured as a call to remember the debt we owe the dead to carry their task forward to preserve who and what they were fighting for.

 

They were fighting for us.

 

In Flanders Fields

BY JOHN MCCRAE

 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

 

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

 

President Lincoln’s words still challenge us this year, perhaps more than ever:

this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

To take up our quarrel with the foe, you do not have to take up a gun.

 

You do not have to give your life.

 

You have a great power to preserve freedom.

 

Your vote.

 

All you need to do is use it.