Page 10 THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – FRIDAY, MAY 27, 2022 The Sounds of Saugus By Mark E. Vogler Memorial Day Parade returns Saturday Saturday, May 25, 2019. What a great day it was for a parade! And what a great day it was to observe Memorial Day weekend by honoring the town’s fallen heroes. I remember it very well three years ago, while snapping photos of the Lynn English Junior Reserve Offi cers Training Corps (JROTC) doing maneuvers in front of Saugus Town Hall. I was standing right near the entrance to the Saugus Public Library, where staging had been set up for the offi - cial Memorial Day Ceremony. It was a beautiful day. And the town was blessed to have a special guest — Francisco A. Ureña, the state’s Secretary of the Department of Veterans’ Services — delivering the keynote speech after the annual Memorial Day Parade. It was a few minutes before the ceremony was set to commence. I remember Saugus Veterans Council Commander Steve Castinetti expressing his displeasure with what he thought was a disappointing turnout for the day’s events. “There should be a lot more people out here today,” Castinetti said, openly chiding the community of Saugus for not having a better response to the day’s events. I happened to agree with him that the seemingly good crowd turnout along the parade route and the cemetery seemed to dwindle drastically by the time the parade ended offi cially in front of Town Hall. Few people actually showed up for the most important —Contest— SKETCH OF THE WEEK GUESS WHO GOT SKETCHED! If you know the right answer, you might win the contest. In this week’s edition, we continue our weekly feature where a local artist sketches people, places and things in Saugus. Got an idea who was sketched this week? If you do, please email me at mvoge@comcast.net or leave a phone message at 978683-7773. Anyone who between now and Tuesday at noon identifi es the Saugonian sketched in this week’s paper qualifi es to have their name put in a green Boston Red Sox hat with a chance to be selected as the winner of a $10 gift certifi cate, compliments of Dunkin’ in the Food Court at the Saugus Square One Mall. But you have to enter to win! Look for the winner and identifi cation in next week’s “The Sounds of Saugus.” Please leave your mailing address in case you are a winner. (Courtesy illustration to The Saugus Advocate by a Saugonian who goes by the name of “The Sketch Artist”) part of the festivities: to pause and refl ect on the great human sacrifi ce of Saugonians during the various wars. Seventy-seven of Saugus young men died in combat serving their country since World War I and through the Iraq wars. All of them were true heroes. All of them deserve a day of remembrance. But it was a refl ection of a disappointing national trend. Memorial Day just doesn’t command the respect and demonstration of patriotic pride that it once did. Hopefully, after the parade being canceled during the past two years because of COVID-19, Saugonians — young and old — will appreciate this year’s event even more. The Town of Saugus, along with the Saugus Veterans Council and the American Legion Post, extends an invitation to all local servicemen and women to join them at the Memorial Day Parade tomorrow (Saturday, May 28). Come march with town offi - cials, residents, students and fellow soldiers to pay tribute to those who gave their lives for our freedom. The parade — which is scheduled to get underway at 10 a.m. — will be “historical” this year, according to Saugus Veterans Council Commander Castinetti, a retired U.S. Navy captain. Billie June “BJ” Farrell, the 77th Commanding Officer of the USS Constitution — but the fi rst woman offi cer in charge during the ship’s 224year history — has accepted an invitation to be the grand marshal of this year’s Annual Memorial Day Parade and keynote speaker for the town’s Memorial Day Ceremony. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime event that you cannot miss!” Castinetti told us a few weeks ago. “It’s historical because Commander Farrell became the fi rst female Commanding Offi cer of this great ship in 224 years. Come out and welcome Commander Farrell to Massachusetts and, more importantly to Saugus!! Meet the new Commanding Offi cer of the USS Constitution, Old Ironsides, on May 28,” he said. The parade will step off at 10 a.m. from Anna Parker Playground at 124 Essex St. in Saugus, proceed to Cliftondale Square, to Central Street and to Winter Street and end at Riverside Cemetery where a Memorial Day Ceremony will take place. I plan on attending this year’s Memorial Day weekend event, just as I have most of the others during my time as Saugus Advocate Editor. But, personally, I’m looking forward to the event. A Saugus Medal of Honor recipient It will be 78 years ago next month that Arthur Frederick DeFranzo, a 25-year-old staff sergeant from Saugus, sacrifi ced his own life on a battlefi eld in France while displaying what his Medal of Honor Citation hailed as “extraordinary heroism and magnifi cent devotion to duty.” On June 10, 1944, near Vaubadon, France, German combat forces opened fire with several machine guns, wounding DeFranzo while he was rescuing an injured man. Unconcerned about his own injuries, he led an attack on the enemy positions and encouraged his men to advance. He destroyed an enemy machine gun position after being hit several more times. He died of those wounds. There are few living Saugus residents who would remember DeFranzo, a member of the Saugus High School Class of 1939. He would be 103 years old today. But for patriotic Saugus residents who take pride in their town, the memory of DeFranzo lives on as the most celebrated example of the ultimate sacrifi ce paid by a Saugonian fi ghting for his country. DeFranzo is one of more than 3,500 Americans to have received the Medal of Honor — highest military decoration presented by the United States government to a member of its armed forces since 1863 — and one of more than 600 who received the medal posthumously. Be safe out there, Saugus Each year at this time, I devote some space in this column to share with readers my personal connection to Memorial Day — in hopes that it might get people taking special steps in their own lives to avoid becoming part of the tragic Memorial Day weekend death toll on the nation’s highways. It happened 44 years ago this weekend. But I remember it like it was yesterday — one of the saddest days of my life — relived over and over each year when millions of people across the country pause to remember those who sacrifi ced their lives for this country. I was working as a reporter on the police beat for The San Angelo (Texas) Standard-Times. And one of my assignments was to write a story about the death toll on West Texas roads and highways. That grim task included coverage of a crash in the Texas Hill Country that killed seven people in one family. There weren’t that many deaths the next day, so the editor on duty asked me to rehash the fatal facts so he could “juice up” a recycled story that had very little new information, but would still run on the front page for the second day in a row. It really bothered me as I left the newsroom that day, knowing how some of us in the media can be so callous in the way we treat these tragedies. I carried out the assignment while expressing some dismay to the insensitive desk editor. I awoke the next morning to a knock on the door of my motel room. The stranger told me it was a family emergency and I needed to call home, so I walked out into the parking lot to make a dreaded collect call to my folks’ home in Swansea, Mass. My brother, Wayne answered the phone and told me that my twin brother, Lance, had gone to a better place and was no longer with us. Here was a U.S. Air Force veteran who survived the Vietnam War — serving his time in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and ’Nam — coming home without a scratch. But on Memorial Day 1978, Lance was one of the 15 people who died over that weekend on Massachusetts roads. On a dark, foggy night, less than an eighth of a mile down the street from my parents’ home, Lance hit a curb with his motorcycle and was fatally injured. As I recall, he snapped a vertebrae in his neck. Alcohol wasn’t a factor. There weren’t any witnesses to report what happened. We’ll never know whether a passing car or an animal could have caused him to lose control of his motorcycle, or whether there was some other kind of fatal distraction. It was a two-hour car ride from my motel room to the nearest airport in Midland, Tex., where I barely caught the last connecting fl ight to Boston that day. I was stuck in Dallas for several hours. More than 12 hours later, I sat in the kitchen of my folks THE SOUNDS | SEE PAGE 16
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