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FERNDALE — The end of this month will mark the celebration of the 108th Memorial Day in the city of Ferndale.
Ferndale will host its Memorial Day parade at 10 a.m. Monday, May 25, at the corner of Livernois Street and West Maplehurst Avenue. The city has celebrated Memorial Day since 1919.
Organized by the Ferndale Memorial Association, the parade route will take the participants from Livernois to West Oakridge Street, followed by Pinecrest Drive and then Nine Mile Road before heading back to Livernois and ending at the Memorial Mall.
“I’m always excited about just this … coming together of our Ferndale community,” FMA President Frank Castronova said. “It’s an event that attracts people from all over the city, and I’m assuming from neighboring communities. A lot of people of all ages line the parade route and come to the ceremony after. So, it’s always great to see a lot of people attend the event.”
This year’s memorial also coincides with the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, marking 250 years since the document was signed on July 4, 1776.
Immediately following the parade, the memorial ceremony will take place at the Memorial Mall, located on Livernois near West Saratoga Street.
The memorial ceremony will feature words from Matt Johnson, a U.S. Navy SEAL with SEAL Team Seven and SEAL Team 10 who completed multiple combat deployments in the Middle East and East Africa.
This will be Johnson’s first time speaking at a memorial event, as he usually makes speeches for law enforcement officers for leadership classes or graduations.
“For this one, I just wanted to focus more on America and why people do what they do, why they sacrifice their lives for this country, and why it is so great,” he said.
Johnson, a resident of Shelby Township, explained what Memorial Day means to him.
“What it means to me is it allows us to enjoy things that we typically take for granted. Because you go to other countries around the world where they don’t have guaranteed safety or freedom or anything like that, that’s just something that we expect as Americans, and that people willingly went and died so that we can live that way.”
The ceremony will include a reading of the names of Ferndale veterans who have died over the course of the year since last year’s Memorial Day. Castronova, a grandson and great-grandson of U.S. armed forces veterans, said this day is important to him, as it’s a reminder that there are people serving here at home and overseas in peace and in wartime to keep people safe.
“Especially on Memorial Day and other other holidays like Veterans Day … (it’s important) just to remember all of these people who serve our nation with strength and bravery and courage and just to put aside some time to honor them, to remember them and to just think about what incredible service they’re doing for millions and millions of their fellow Americans,” he said.
