Events in Bangor honor area veterans

BANGOR – He was there to help liberate Buchenwald and took part in the Battle of the Bulge. He helped break through the Siegfried Line and root out German troops after Allied forces took it over.

But on Friday, Nolan Gibbs, 83, of Monroe was at the Cole Transportation Museum to take part in the annual Veterans Day festivities, which this year mark the end of the museum’s season.

During the four-hour event, veterans and others were treated to a concert by the Bangor Band, which played medleys of military tunes and music that was popular during World War II.

They listened to middle-school pupils read their award-winning essays based on interviews with veterans who volunteer at the museum.

One of those volunteers is Gibbs, who served with the U.S. Army’s 6th Armored Division, led by Gen. George Patton. He decided to volunteer at the Perry Road museum as a way to fill his days since the death of his wife, Shirley, eight years ago, the veteran said.

Earlier in the day, Gibbs took part in the Bangor parade.

Gibbs said he walked in last year’s Veterans Day parade, but had to quit about half way through because his leg was bothering him.

“I got frostbite in the Battle of the Bulge,” Gibbs said, lifting up his left pant leg to show a blackened, mottled shin and calf, one of his World War II souvenirs.

This year, he decided to ride one of the yellow school buses that carried veterans unable to walk the parade route, which began in Brewer and ended in Bangor.

To this day, Gibbs declines to talk about what he saw in the German concentration camp. But when it comes to student interviews, everything else is fair game.

“They’re not afraid to ask questions,” Gibbs said with a chuckle. “And they need to know.”

Among the questions he’s been asked are what soldiers in his day ate, where they slept, and if they wore body armor like today’s troops do, he said.

“I told them that if you wanted to make soup, you’d make it in your helmet,” the only body armor soldiers had then, he said.

Though tinged with sadness, Nolan Gibbs’ Veterans Day had an upside. He was invited to dinner by neighbors on Clark Road so he didn’t have to cook.

And when he went out to get his morning newspaper, he found a gift of a half-pound chunk of cheese – real cheese, not that processed, single-wrap stuff.

Elsewhere in the city, dozens gathered at the Korean War Memorial at Mount Hope Cemetery to make sure that the “Forgotten War” would not be forgotten.

During a ceremony led by Korean War veteran Ken Buckley of Bangor, Gov. John Baldacci and Yong Cha Jones solemnly laid an evergreen wreath in front of the memorial as the Brewer High School Band played the Navy Hymn.

Jones, a native of Korea now living in Bangor, was 11 years old during the height of the Korean War.

Winners of the Cole museum’s “What Freedom Means to Me After Interviewing a Veteran” essay contest were: first place, Jasmine Gregory, Winslow Junior High School, who interviewed Warren Burns; second, Katelyn Reynolds, Winslow Junior High School, who interviewed Clair Bemis; and third, Katarina Rydlizky, Ellsworth High School, who interviewed Wayne Cartier.