Crowds mark Memorial Day in Nahant

NAHANT – Hundreds of residents lined the street along Nahant Road in Nahant Monday morning for the town’s annual Memorial Day Parade.The parade kicked off at 9:30 a.m. at 40 Steps Beach as veterans, marching bands, the local Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops and hundreds of other Nahant residents paid tribute to fallen servicemen and women.”It’s fantastic,” said Selectman Richard Lombard, who served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. “It goes back so many years to honor all the dead. It’s a great a day, a great parade and great people. It looks like the whole town showed up and they keep moving. It looks like there’s 3,000 on one side and 3,000 on the other side. They just keep moving.”The parade stopped at Greenlawn Cemetery, where the crowd gathered around for a memorial ceremony. After a 21-gun salute and Taps played by the Swampscott High School marching band, 12-year-old Arianna Alberts won the honor of reciting this year’s rendition of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which she did flawlessly to the crowd of hundreds.”I went to the beach and just said it over and over,” said Alberts after the ceremony. “It shows how we can’t hallow what they did to the ground, but we can dedicate it to the people who died. (Memorial Day) helps us remember the people that died for our freedom.”State Sen. Thomas McGee (D-Lynn) was on hand and called the parade a “great tradition” for Nahant.”I’ve been doing this for too many years to count,” said McGee. “It’s like what you think about when you think about Memorial Day and small town America with the parade and the Gettysburg Address. It really represents what’s best about America, and really reflects the importance of Memorial Day and what it means to all of us. You really get that feeling here. It’s a special parade.”Eagle Scouts from Boy Scout Troop 50, Peter Klee and Christopher Mason, were front and center at the ceremony. Klee said he and Mason, who became Eagle Scouts last year, were back to support the younger scouts.”It’s a good organization and it’s good for the younger scouts to see people still becoming Eagle Scouts,” said Klee. “It means a lot to the leadership and the people in the troop.”Mason said being a part of the parade also shows people that the Boy Scouts are still going strong.”A lot of people feel that Boy Scouts has died out,” said Mason. “But it’s still a big part of communities everywhere. Having it in the parade kind of shows it’s still a big part.Jack Crowley, a retired Army veteran, said he has been watching the parade since he was a little kid, and noted it’s just as beautiful today.”It just keeps trucking along,” sid Crowley. “The cemetery is always beautiful, the town did a great job keeping it up. Every year it’s the same, everybody comes out. You look around and there are a lot of flags in these graves. For a small town, there’s a lot of servicemen, especially in World War II. Half the town was in that war. I had three uncles in the way. Thank God they all came back.”Matt Tempesta can be reached at [email protected].