LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - NOVEMBER 12, 2023 by Lynne Belluscio This issue of the Pennysaver will be coming out on Veterans Day. Hopefully you saw the announcement in last week’s Pennysaver about the service at the Soldier’s Monument on Trigon Park which will take place at 11 o’clock. I hope many of you went over for the ceremony to honor our veterans. This week is also Operation Green Light Week. Put a green light in your window or on your front porch. It will remind our veterans that we are thinking of them and want to support them. Operation green light is an initiative to support military veterans and raise awareness about the challenges they might face. Counties throughout New York State are participating in a variety of ways. Genesee County will illuminate many of the county buildings in Batavia. In November 1918, the people of LeRoy learned of the armistice between the United States and Germany which ended the war. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, church bells were rung. Folks marched up Main Street to the Municipal Building on the corner of Clay Street and West Main Street. The women of the Red Cross in their white uniforms marched in the parade. The Butler Drum Corps, the men in the white caps, joined the parade. There were men on horseback. People drove to the Municipal Building and apparently parked anyway they could. A photographer stood on the top of the Milliman Block across the street (where Walgreens in now) and took photos of all the people. Soldiers and sailors who had returned home, gathered for more photographs. Later the photos were published as post cards many of which are now in the collection of the Historical Society. Terry Krautwurst who researched all the Genesee County men and women who served in the war, has said that over 270 men and women from LeRoy answered the call to duty and were willing to fight for the great cause. Twelve LeRoyans did not survive. In 2018, a hundred years after the celebration at the Municipal Building in 1918, on Veteran’s Day, a granite stone was dedicated on Trigon Park to those twelve. Terry is quick to point out that they did not give their lives. Their lives were taken from them. Perhaps if you are at Trigon Park this year, you took a minute to read their names: George Botts, Cecelia Cochran, Errol Crittenden, Leo Fiorito, Thomas Illes, Edward Kane, Percy Luttrell, Patrick Molyneaux, Edgar Murrell, George Ripton, Alvin Smith, John Wilder. It is ironic that on November 11, 1918, as hundreds of jubilant people gathered at the Municipal Building to celebrate the end of the war, the body of 27-year-old Private Edward Kaine of LeRoy was lowered into a grave in France. He had fallen on the battlefield, and was on the way to recovery, when he succumbed to pneumonia on November 9. His family in LeRoy received notice a few days later. In Canada and Great Britain, Armistice Day is known asRemembranceDay, or Poppy Day. Canadians wear Remembrance pins and place poppies and poppy wreaths on war memorials on November 11. School children recite the poem “In Flanders’ Fields.” The poppy tradition in the United States is part of the Memorial Day event. It wasn’t until after the Korean War that in the United States that the name changed from Armistice Day to Veterans Day (Just a note, there is no apostrophe in Veterans Day, they do not own it). The American Legion was chartered by Congress in 1919 as a patriotic veterans’ organization. Membership quickly grew to over 1 million and local posts grew up over the country including the Botts Fiorito Post #576 in LeRoy. The building where the LeRoy American Legion meets, was donated to them by Ernest Woodward. Adjacent to the building are bowling lanes and an outdoor pavilion. Each year, the Legion choses a person to be “LeRoyan of the Year.” This year it is Kate Flint. Here are a fewmore facts about Veterans Day. In 1926, Congress passed a resolution for an annual observance creating Armistice Day. It became a national holiday in 1938. President Eisenhower changed the name from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill which moved the celebration to the fourth Monday in October. It went into effect in 1971, but President Gerald Ford returned Veterans Day to November 11. Today, Veterans Day commemorates veterans of all wars. Today, 10 per cent of living veterans are women. 5.9 million veterans served during the Vietnam War. 7.8 million veterans served in the Gulf War. 933,000 veterans served during the Korean War. Alaska, Virginia and Wyoming have the highest percentage of veterans. Frank Woodruff Buckles, was the last surviving American military veteran of World War 1. He was an Army corporal, born in 1901 in Bethany, Missouri. He enlisted when he was 16, and served with a detachment from Fort Riley, driving ambulances and motorcycles near the front lines in Europe. He is listed as being a civilian prisoner of war during World War 2 and having participated in a raid at Los Banos. He met with several Presidents in his later years. President Obama said that Mr. Buckles lived a remarkable life that “reminds us of the true meaning of patriotism and our obligations to each other as Americans.” Mr. Buckles was the grand marshal of the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington in 2007. He was honored by Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon and met with President George W. Bush at the White House in March 2008. He appeared before a Senate sub committee in 2009 to support legislation, named in his honor, to bestow federal status on a World War 1 memorial on the Washington Mall, built in the 1930s. Frank Buckles died at the age of 110 on February 27, 2011, in Charles Town, West Virginia and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Armistice Day - Remembrance Day – Veterans Day Green Light Week – The Last WW1 Veteran
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