Madison residents lament low turnout at ceremony to mark Veterans Day

MADISON – Bob Christen, a Vietnam veteran who lost his left leg in a friendly fire accident, cannot recall the last time the town’s Veterans Day observance drew a good crowd.

Every year, it seems, maybe a dozen veterans and their relatives attend a somber ceremony in Forest Hills Cemetery and then a service at Tardiff-Belanger American Legion Post 139, named for veterans of the first two world wars.

This year was no exception. The seven veterans on the dais in the Legion hall on Saturday nearly outnumbered the mostly elderly men and women in the audience.

Yet, Christen and other post members continue the tradition in this Somerset County town of honoring the men and women who served their country.

Christen, who is 51 and lives in Norridgewock, believes the low turnouts reflect the hustle and bustle of life today.

For many people, the day’s meaning “has been lost to advertising, Veterans Day sales,” Christen said Saturday afternoon.

“If you look at it, most every family has a vet in it,” he said. “If we don’t take the time to do this, who’s going to? If we don’t honor our veterans and the sacrifices they made, it would have been pretty much in vain.”

While Veterans Day events in other, larger communities still draw respectable crowds, the members of Post 139 say it’s been years since townspeople truly paid attention.

Although Legionnaires here deplore the trend, they have come to accept it. People today are busier than ever. And with this country’s last protracted war nearly 3 decades old, memories of service and sacrifice have faded.

Veterans see the trend even among their own: Of the post’s 273 members, only 15 or 20 regularly attend meetings. Each year, it falls to a dozen or so members to carry out special events such as holiday observances. Few are younger than 50.

“It’s hard to get more people involved. There are too many things going on today,” said Leroy Welch, a 55-year-old Navy veteran who is sergeant-at-arms for Post 139.

“A lot of these guys are older,” he said. “It’s going to come to the point where we’re going to have a hard time unless we have some new people in here.”

Gilbert Prevost Sr., a 73-year-old Navy veteran, agreed that low turnouts reflect the times.

“All organizations have the same problem. It’s our day and age,” he said before Saturday’s ceremony. Most people today, he added, “take everything for granted.”

But not the few active members of Post 139. At 11 a.m. Saturday, 10 of them gathered at Forest Hills Cemetery, as they do every year.

There were so few that a member of the Ladies Auxiliary had to hold one of the flags.

The chaplain read a prayer, and Christen offered words to honor service and sacrifice for freedom. Prevost then laid a wreath at a grave site, an honor guard fired three rifle volleys skyward, and the recorded wail of taps washed over the veterans.

The observance continued at the Legion hall, where a small group of veterans, their families and one veteran’s widow recited the pledge of allegiance and listened to a crackling recording of actor John Wayne paying tribute to veterans.

Then, one by one, the veterans on the dais recalled the holiday’s meaning. They used terms such as “justice of cause” in the “quest for an honorable world peace,” and stressed the importance of pausing to thank veterans for their sacrifices.

“I feel a little aback that there are only about two dozen people here,” Ronald Page, the post’s chaplain, told those gathered for the ceremony. “But even two dozen know the true meaning of what veterans are.”