A day for remembering

Brandon Stingo marched in the Doylestown Memorial Day Parade on Monday, a youth member of the Marine Corps League's Central Bucks Detachment wearing fatigues and standing ramrod straight as a member of the color guard.

On Tuesday, Stingo, 17, is scheduled to pledge to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." He's joining the Marines.

Memorial Day was especially meaningful to Stingo, who lives in Willow Grove and attends Upper Moreland High School.

"I'm thinking about the people who aren't here, who served so I can serve," Stingo said. "I want to give back."

In Doylestown and elsewhere, it was a day for remembering, a day for waving flags, bowing heads, and playing Taps.

Organizers believe Doylestown's parade — held for the last 145 years — is the oldest in the country. People started putting chairs out along the 1.5-mile parade route at 7 a.m., waiting for glimpses of the high school marching bands, Irish step dancers, veterans, and Girl Scouts.

It's a highlight of the year for the Bucks County borough, where neighbors gather on porches to drink mimosas and wave to one another decked out in red, white, and blue.

The small-town feel of the parade suits Bill Meisle, who stood on his friend Carol Fischer's East Court Street porch to watch the festivities.

"When we moved in to Doylestown, everybody said, 'Where are you going to volunteer?' And, all of a sudden, we were delivering Meals on Wheels," said Meisle, who moved to Doylestown with his wife, Nanci, 17 years ago.

When Sharon Forostiak spotted a veterans' group marching up East Court Street, she stood and motioned for her sons Kevin, 9, and Paul, 5, to do the same.

"For all the guys that fought," Forostiak said to her boys.

Forostiak, of Warminster, takes her boys to the parade every year because they like the fire engines and jeeps.

And the veterans, Kevin Forostiak said.

"Without them, we wouldn't be here right now," Kevin said.

Donald and Esther Procknow of Buckingham typically spend Memorial Day in Vermont with family, but Donald's recent stroke prevented them from traveling this year.

The holiday is important to the Procknows — Donald Procknow is a World War II veteran, and the couple still support veterans causes. So they braved the heat, and, accompanied by nurse Holly Jacoby, staked out a spot along East Court Street.

They were glad they did.

"A patriot helped us push up the hill," Esther Procknow said, pointing to her husband's wheelchair, which was difficult to push up the steep streets of Doylestown. "It was wonderful."

Waiting for the post-parade memorial service to begin at Doylestown Cemetery, Grace Moore walked slowly from one gravestone to another, 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," said Moore, a former Army nurse and veteran of the Vietnam War. "It's important to pass that on."

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 his wife drove him.

Along the parade route, one elderly man in the crowd looked the Moores in the eye, stood up, and put his hand on his heart.

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

A few feet away, Jean Meyers of Hatboro sat with fellow members of the BuxMont Women's Veterans Group. Marching in the parade is a thrill, she said.

"They're clapping for us the whole way," said Meyers, a World War II Army veteran. "That makes us feel good."

Dorothy Snow of Upper Southampton pointed to the button on her blue sash, a black-and-white photograph of herself during her days as an Army nurse in World War II.

"I took care of all the boys from Normandy Beach," Snow said. "My husband was a Pearl Harbor survivor. There aren't many of them left. We have to remember."

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."