It probably did not feel like a muggy 85 degrees–as it did today in Bunnell–when the Armistice was signed at 5 a.m. 106 years ago in an isolated part of the Compiègne forest northeast of Paris. Not that too many of the hundreds of people who turned up for today’s Veterans Day mile-long parade and following hour-long ceremony would have traded the sun and heat for the bleak icy drizzles of what was left of the French countryside when the guns fell silent at the 11th hour six hours and nearly 3,000 more dead after the armistice was signed. “We would also thank you for the rain that you sent to another place,” the retired Army Chief of Chaplains Harry Gilman said in his invocation.
By then the crowd that had gathered in the half-shade of the grounds of the Government Services Building, including many of the 1,000 participants in the parade than the hundreds who’d lined State Road 100 to cheer them on, had been enduring a long delay for the start of the ceremony, so Flagler County FireFlight, the emergency helicopter, would drape the scene with its great Stars and Stripes trailing in the wind below it.
David Lyndon, director of Flagler County’s Veterans Services and the ceremony’s emcee, finally decided to end the wait and have County Commission Chair Andy Dance recognize all the elected officials (14 in all, including a judge), a reflection of the event’s political and geographic ecumenism: until last year each local government held its own Veterans Day ceremony, staggered throughout the day and early afternoon. It took a special kind of stamina to attend all of them, though it also seemed a bit pointless to be playing turf wars on a day of armistice.
In came Dave Brannon, the chief of police for almost the last three years. Two years ago he was looking for pictures of old Bunnell police cars. Googling took him to a Flagler County Historical Society picture of a 1963 Veterans Day parade in Bunnell, one of those pictures the late Sisco Deen of the Flagler Historical Society, himself a veteran, had emailed to the many recipients of his “historically speaking” archives of Flagler County history.
“I started asking some of our elected leaders that have been around for a long time: When’s the last time you’ve had a Veteran Day parade?” Brannon said. He told them about the 1963 picture. They told him that was probably the last time there’d been one. So he started speaking with his city manager’s and county commission’s permission, he started approaching other local governments with the notion of reviving the joint parade. “Everyone said yes,” he said. He formed a committee. And last year saw its first such joint parade, with all local cities (except Marineland) and the county participating, and this year all cities, the county and the School Board participating, for a total of some 54 entries and over 1,000 participants. The schools alone contributed both Flagler Palm Coast and Matanzas High School marching bands plus Bunnell Elementary’s drum-line, and still more participants from other schools.
State Road 100 was closed off at its western intersection with U.S. 1 with two enormous dump trucks and the help of the Florida Highway Patrol, and at its east end and every residential intersection in between with help from the sheriff’s COP (Citizens on patrol) volunteers and Bunnell police officers, who had to miss the parade for that duty.
“I’m elated,” Brannon, who kept a low profile throughout the ceremony, standing at the very back of the crowd under the GSB’s overhang, said. “It’s a lot of planning and work to make that happen. But as I’ve said to others, you know the sacrifice our veterans and their families make for our country, you know, this is nothing compared to what they do for us. So we’re happy to do it, and it’s an honor and privilege to do it.”
The keynote speaker was Randy Stapleford, who currently represents Flagler County on the Florida Inland Navigation District, has served as a liaison for three members of congress, and has an intimidating military resume that, when Lyndon went abbreviated it in his introduction, took up almost more time than Stapleford’s own speech. “no matter who you are, veteran or not, when you love this country, you will fight, fight, fight for it,” Stapleford said to applause. “It’s often been quoted that America without the sacrifices of our veterans would be like God without his angels. So I’m honored to be here today, and I’ve been humbled once again, it’s been a privilege to speak to you this morning.”
After an eight-year wait, Lyndon gifted Stapleford a painting that had hung in his office all these years. “My dad was a World War Two Pearl Harbor survivor,” Stapleford said. “This looked like his ship. And I said, I want that. And I tried to buy it for years. Then I find it hanging in David’s office. And so I’ve been begging for eight years, and I’m so grateful to receive this today.”
Stapleford was followed, if not upstaged, by Melissa Ryan, a seventh grader at Buddy Taylor Elementary who delivered the day’s Veterans Day Essay. “For me,” Ryan said, Veterans Day is “a chance to pay respect to those who have put their our lives first before theirs to protect our country and democracy. Furthermore, my mom served in the Air Force for six years. Now, on Veterans Day, I honor her for everything she did for me, as well as this country.” She continued, delivering the most poignant words of the day by any speaker: “I know a lot of men and women today who come home from war ask themselves, why me? Why did I survive? To those people, I would say, God has a purpose for everyone, to take this moment in, and be proud to be the voice for those who are no longer physically with us, but still in our memories.”
Jeffrey Kingdon received the Veteran opf the Year award, named for Col. Gary E. DeKay, who had been instrumental in establishing the award. Kingdon, a Marine, is a Vietnam War veteran who worked in robotics and technology, and donates wooden plaques, thousands of them, in recognition of selfless deeds. “You will see his plaques in barber shops, restaurants, radio stations, hospitals, nursing homes, police departments, and, of course, the VFW and the DAV,” Lyndon said. Cathy Heighter and her Remembering heroes organization gifted him a quilt.
The ceremony wrapped up with musical performances by the Community Chorus of Palm Coast and Vince Cautero.
