Addison County
Celebrates Memorial Day May 25th
Rotary club’s Flag Raising Project raises funds, flags ADDISON COUNTY — Many have seen an abundance of U.S. flags around Middlebury on the five major flag holidays over the past two years. In the spring of 2013 the Middlebury Rotary Club launched its Flag Raising Project, in which club members in exchange for an annual subscription will raise a flag in front of a home or business for Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day and Veterans Day. This year, in addition to these flags, Middlebury Rotary is kicking off a new endeavor, The Veteran’s Flag Project, to promote patriotism and to raise funds for local charities. For a $50 annual subscription, they will affix a 3-inch-by-5inch plaque to a 10-foot flag pole and display it in Cannon Park on those five holidays. The plaque will display the name, rank, service, tour of duty and years of service of the veteran of one’s choice, and anyone may visit the flag at their leisure in Cannon Park in downtown Middlebury across from the Ilsley Library. Tim Hollander, president of the Middlebury Rotary, thinks this will be a popular addition to the organization’s annual Flag Raising Project. For more information email rotaryflagproject@gmail.com or fill out and return the form in the Addison Independent. All proceeds will fund charitable needs in Addison County. This year’s beneficiaries are HOPE, Elderly Services, The Turning Point Center and Vermont Special Olympics.
LISA RADER, LEFT, her daughter Stella, and Lisa’s mother, Rhoda, pose during the 2012 Memorial Day ceremony in Brandon. Rader was a flower girl in 1981, and Stella is wearing the same dress her mother wore that day.
Flower girl tradition spans generations By LEE J. KAHRS BRANDON — Every year on the last Monday in May, a group of first-grade girls in white dresses clutch bunches of fresh lilacs in their small hands. They walk single file up Center Street from the Brandon Post Office, smiling and waving to their families and friends. They follow the American Legion Color Guard and the Otter Valley and Neshobe School marching bands, and are joined by the Pittsford and Brandon fire department engines. The small parade with a purpose makes its way to the gazebo in Central Park. There, the girls stand waiting, some fidgeting, some listening, others quietly looking around as the chaplain gives the blessing, and a young boy recites the Gettysburg Address. At the appointed time, after the patriotic songs have been played, the little girls cross Route 7 to the Brandon Civil War monument. They circle the monument twice, then lay their flowers to honor the fallen. The Color Guard fires a 21-gun salute, and in conclusion, two high school trumpeters blow “Taps” in echo, one answering the other with those
singular, plaintive notes. That is Memorial Day in Brandon, and it is unlike Memorial Day anywhere else. The tradition of the flower girls is one that goes back at least to the first decade of the last century, and it is a tradition often handed down through families. Everyone knows someone who was a flower girl in Brandon. As so many traditional Brandon institutions fall by the wayside, like the Rotary Club and the Neshobe Sportsman Club, the tradition of the Memorial Day Flower (See Flower girls, Page 8)
A Publication of the Addison Independent, Thursday, May 21, 2015