A day for remembering

Grace Moore walked slowly from one gravestone to the other, her head bent as she read the names: Henry E. Butler, Spanish American War, Army. Henry W. Klemmer, World War I, Navy. Frank M. Flack, World War I, Army.

"There's a lot of people that have died for our freedom," Moore, a former Army nurse and a veteran of the Vietnam War, said at the Doylestown Cemetery on Monday. "It's important to pass that on."

Moore and thousands of others took part in the Doylestown Memorial Day Parade, which organizers believe is the oldest in the country.

It was a day for remembering, a day for waving flags, bowing heads and playing Taps, clear and true, across the cemetery, where veterans and others gathered at the end of the parade route for a short memorial service.

Moore's husband Jim, an Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War, usually walks in the parade, but he's fresh off a knee replacement so this year Grace Moore drove him.

As they made their way down Court Street, an elderly man in the crowd stood up and put his hand on his heart.

"I started crying," Moore said. "It was beautiful."

Later, Rich Scott of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, addressed the crowd, telling them about the VFW's plans to erect a Global War on Terror memorial in honor of 16 Bucks County residents who have died in wars since Sept. 11, 2001.

"There are 4,320 minutes in this Memorial Day weekend," Scott told the crowd, which had fallen into a hushed silence. "I'm glad you spent some of them here."