The Martha's Vineyard Times

Tisbury students marched to the sea in remembrance

May 30, 2012

Martha's Vineyard Times File Video

Last Friday, May 23, friends and families waited along Main Street in Vineyard Haven to join the Tisbury School students in their annual Memorial Day March to the Sea.

The students waved flags and carried flowers from the school to Owen Park, where they threw colorful blossoms in the water to honor veterans. The school's band, led by Julie Schilling, played patriotic tunes along the way. Eighth-graders Ryan Corr and Amber Willoughby served as flagbearers.

The mournful sound of "Taps" played on trumpets by their classmates, Ben Davey and Dayanna Middleton, echoed across the harbor as the crowd stood in respectful silence.

Afterwards everyone gathered at the top of the park by the flagpole for a ceremony led by eighth-graders Edwin Gould-Hatt and Michaela Piche. Guest veterans included Dukes County Director of Veterans Services Jo Ann Murphy, Staff Sergeant Richard Monaco, U.S. Army Reserves, and Sergeant Julius Middleton, an Army National Guard member currently on active duty with the U.S. Army.

As the guest speaker, Ms. Murphy read the poem, "In Flanders Fields," a war poem written during the First World War by Canadian physician and Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.

Eighth-grader Casey McAndrews sang the national anthem and the band played "America the Beautiful." Everyone watched as the flag was raised and lowered to half-mast, and left the ceremony in the Memorial Day spirit.