Memorial Day in Pacific Palisades Celebrated

Sons of American Legion member Hank Elder made comments at the Memorial Day Service in Pacific Palisades yesterday
Photo: RICH SCHMITT

Memorial Day was celebrated in Pacific Palisades today, to remember all of those who died serving the United States in peacetime and war.

This was the second annual observance sponsored by the Ronald Reagan American Legion Post 283. It was started last year by Jay McCann, the judge advocate and long-time member of the Post, who was also active in seeing the bocce courts and Veterans Gardens completed.

After the UCLA Color Guard posted the flags, Post 283 Commander Joe Ramirez welcomed about 100 people to the ceremony, which was held on the street in front of the Post and the Post Office. Prayers were led by Post 283 Chaplin S. T. Williams Jr.

Retired Airforce F-15E Crew Chief, Kyianura Lewis-Baldwin read the Gettysburg Address.

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 cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot 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.

Representative Brad Sherman was unable to make it, but sent a representative from his office, who presented the Post with a certificate and a flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol.

The crowd joined in singing the National Anthem. Then, led by bagpiper Bill Walker, a former Sons of the American Legion Commander, the group walked to Veterans Garden at the Recreation Center.

Afterwards a lunch, conversation and comradery were celebrated by the residents who attended the ceremony.

Resident Bob Gold, whose home was destroyed in the January 7, Palisades fire, tied a poppy around a flag in Veterans Garden, during the Memorial Day Ceremony
Photo: RICH SCHMITT