Marines still in their teens and Army World War II veterans in their 80s and 90s marched in Denver’s Memorial Day Parade on Saturday, honoring centuries of service and sacrifice by the U.S. military.
The war in Iraq – and its daily death toll – added poignancy to a ceremony after the parade at the Colorado Veterans Monument near the state Capitol.
Marine Lt. Col. Steve Duarte read the names of 16 Coloradans, nearly all killed in action since Memorial Day a year ago.
Army Sgt. Armand “Luke” Frickey was one, killed in January when his vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb near Baghdad, said his mother, Denise Frickey of Denver.
At Saturday’s ceremony, she and her husband, Vance, sat with family members of other soldiers who died in Iraq.
“We appreciate that people care,” Denise Frickey said of the tributes to those who had lost loved ones in America’s wars. “He was our baby.”
Luke Frickey died just short of his 21st birthday.
At the ceremony, officials honored Navy veteran Paul Murphy, Colorado’s last living survivor from the sinking of the USS Indian apolis in the Pacific during World War II.
They also gave certificates to three members of the Hmong community in the Denver area as “Forgotten Heroes” for their role fighting with U.S. troops in Vietnam.
Earlier, families gathered along the parade route to cheer veterans marching behind American Legion and other banners.
Near 15th Street and Tremont Place, Alysia Padilla and her family stood with a sign that simply said, “Thank you.”
“We just wanted to show our support and say thank you for the sacrifice, the time, the tears and sweat,” said Padilla, whose 1 1/2-year-old daughter, Josylin, held a tiny American flag.
At California and 17th streets, Brad Dore of Thornton sat on a stone plaza wall with his daughter Courtney, 11, and son Nathan, 8, to cheer on the marchers.
“We need to honor people from the past,” said Dore, a Thornton police officer. “Too often we forget about the people who’ve sacrificed.”
Parade organizers made Denver police Detective Donald “Donnie” Young, who recently was killed by a gunman, the procession’s posthumous co-grand marshal. His widow, Kelly, and daughter Kourtney, 14, were guests on the parade’s reviewing stand.
Among those who marched solemnly was 93-year-old George Gray Jr. of Denver, a member of the Wallace Simpson Post #29 of the American Legion. Gray served in the Army in World War II and recalled indignities that he and other black GIs endured in a segregated military and nation in the early 1940s.
Yet Gray also remembered President Franklin Roosevelt’s stirring radio address in December 1941 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the strong sense of duty to serve.
Proudly, Gray held up his ball cap with the inscription, “The Greatest Generation – World War II.”
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-820-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.