He had his speech all written and ready to go for last year’s Memorial Day observances. But at the beginning of that weekend, former Lieutenant Bob Day fell in his kitchen and ended up with a severely compressed fracture of a vertebra in his back.
"Bob has had a difficult year," said Bob Loucks as he introduced Day as the 2007 speaker. "He has fallen three times and has spent time in both the hospital and the health care center recovering from these falls. But today Bob is here and ready to do his duty again."
Day had been sitting patiently in the shade of a nearby tree, accompanied by his wife, Janet. He made his way slowly but with determination across the Green toward the war memorial and then shared a brief summary of the history of Memorial Day, which was originally known as Decoration Day.
"Today the terminology Decoration Day has more or less lapsed into very well-deserved oblivion," Day said. "But now Memorial Day is the day when you take out a second mortgage and fill up your gas tank and take a trip. Or you light the barbecue, or go to Bob’s to buy half-price furniture."
He encouraged everyone in the large crowd gathered around the war memorial to use this annual day to remember veterans who died in service, "not veterans like me, who survived."
Loucks also honored Bob Tompkins, a Sharon resident who was originally from Amenia. It took him years to get permission from Tompkins, Loucks said, to tell the story of how the World War II veteran was flying a B17 bomber over Germany, attacking a Messerschmitt plane factory. His plane was attacked by a group of the planes themselves. His foot was fractured by a shot fired through the bottom of his B17, and then both engines were blown out of his plane and he and his crewmates had to parachute out.
He landed, with his fractured, blood-covered foot, just outside the Swiss border. He and a crewmate made it to Switzerland, where they were told they had to remain until the end of the war. Instead, they escaped in a rowboat across Lake Geneva to Evian, France. He was found by members of the French Resistance and eventually made his way back to the United States. He ran a farm in Illinois for a while and then returned to Sharon. Tompkins, who did not wear his uniform to the service, stood quietly at the back of the crowd with his wife and two grandsons.
High school senior Meghan Kenny led the crowd in singing patriotic songs, including "America the Beautiful." Taps was played, firearms were shot and a group photo was taken from the top of the Clock Tower.
Awards were announced as well for bikes that had been patriotically decked out. This year’s judges were Evelyn Tompkins and Claire Pedersen. The best girl’s bike was judged to be that of Mackenzie Riley. The best boy’s bike was judged to be that of Zachary Ongley.
