Nearly 131 years ago, Ironton residents decided veterans needed a proper salute.

Saturday, May 06, 2000

Nearly 131 years ago, Ironton residents decided veterans needed a proper salute.

That tradition will continue this month when members of the 132nd annual Memorial Day Parade Committee begin their procession down Third Street at 10 a.m. May 29, said Jim Adkins, committee member.

"In 1968, that’s when they decorated the graves of the Union and Confederate soldiers in Mississippi. That started off the Decoration Day, as it was originally called," Adkins said. "They had a parade in Ironton with the Grand Army and there has been a parade in Ironton ever since."

Just as the number of veterans increases with the passing decades, the Memorial Day Parade has grown every year.

"We some way, somehow and somewhere add something a little bit more to the parade every year," Adkins said. "My reason for having the parade is that I’m retired military and it’s a small way for me to pay respects to all of my fallen comrades.

"We have the parade out of respect for those who gave their lives for this country in any and all conflicts and wars. People that didn’t give their lives, still, they served. It’s out of respect for those guys – my peers and supervisors, our community leaders like J.B. Collier Sr., who had quite a war record; and Charlie Meadows, who lost a leg in Vietnam. It’s out of respect for those veterans."

Ironton does more than throw a simple parade in honor of the country’s veterans, though. Festivities will begin May 23 at the Past Grand Marshal’s Dinner at 7 p.m. at the Elks’ Club. There will be a presentation of the official cane, Adkins said.

"On May 25, there will be a contingent of people who served in the Navy Reserves, the VFW Color Guard, the Marine Color Guard, the Past Grand Marshals and the Rock Hill band, who will march from Center Street between Fourth and Fifth streets to the river, where at 7 p.m. we will have Navy Night to honor all the seagoing services," he said. "The Coast Guard will have one of its vessels sitting off the shore and they will drop a wreath in memory of those who served."

The final activity leading up to the parade will be 2p.m. May 28 at Woodland Cemetery with a salute at the soldier’s plot for all those who gave their lives for this country’s freedom.

Ironton’s Memorial Day activities are known throughout the state and nation thanks to publicity in such publications as the Ohio Magazine and televised broadcasts on CNN in 1993, Adkins said.

"Our Memorial Day Parade is the oldest continually running parade in the nation," he said.

There is official documentation supporting this claim which cites Ironton’s parade as the official parade of Ohio, Adkins said.

The parade usually draws between 35,000 to 50,000 people to the streets of Ironton and Adkins said he hopes the same will be true this year.

"We have people from all over the nation that come to see the parade," Adkins said. "This is when everyone in Ironton has their homecomings and family get-togethers. Two brothers who served in World War II together, they come in. They’re in their 80s and they put on the old GI uniforms and they march in the parade. One lives in Florida and he comes back to get together with his brother to be in the parade."

With so much to do to prepare for the big day, the committee is recruiting all the help it can get, Adkins said.

"We beg and plead for people to come out and help us," he said.

Unfortunately, the committee membership continues to decrease, Adkins added.

"We need the younger people," he said. "We’ve got a few coming out and helping, but we would love to see some college and high school kids come out and take an interest in continuing a tradition that I’d hate to see Ironton lose."

If it’s up to Adkins, though, the parade will continue forever.

"If we have anything to do with it, hopefully the parade will go another 130 years," he said. "I look forward to it every year."