BRATTLEBORO — American Legion Post 5 will celebrate Memorial Day this year with a Convocation at Brattleboro Union High School on Friday, May 27, at 9 a.m., and the traditional Memorial Day event at the Brattleboro Common on Memorial Day, May 30, at 11 a.m.
Brattleboro attorney Tom Costello, a decorated Marine Corps combat infantry officer in Vietnam, is one of the Post 5 members organizing the two services.
He said the convocation at BUHS is designed to honor the 11 Brattleboro-area men who were killed in combat during the Vietnam War, as well as to recognize the BUHS students who prepared a tribute to these men for a special recognition dinner held at Post 5 on Nov. 21, 2015.
Costello said the families of the Vietnam veterans have been invited to the convocation, which will include participation by the Marine Corps League Color Guard, the American Legion Band, and the BUHS Madrigals.
Presenting a special flag
Stetson “Bobby” Blake, brother of John Blake, who was a graduate of St. Michael's High School, Class of 1963, and who died on March 21, 1970, in Vietnam, will present the American Flag given to him at the time of the burial of his brother in Brattleboro.
Costello said Stetson Blake was deeply moved by the efforts of BUHS student Aidan Paradis at the November dinner to honor his brother's memory and offered to donate his brother's memorabilia, including the flag that draped his coffin, to Costello. Instead, it will be going to BUHS.
Costello, who will be the keynote speaker at the May 27 event, said the flag has remained in its triangular shape since being taken off John Blake's coffin at the funeral 46 years ago. The family is allowing the school to raise the flag one last time - on May 27 on the BUHS flagpole.
Then, it will return to its case for yearly display, Costello said.
The Memorial Day ceremonies at the Brattleboro Common will follow the visitation by the military societies to the graveyards in Brattleboro during the morning of May 30, and will include the formal ceremonies at 11 a.m. on the Common honoring Brattleboro's fallen.
Richard Hodgden, a member of the American Legion and Commandment of the Marine Corps League, will be Master of Ceremonies.
'Two extraordinary women'
Costello said the principal addresses at the ceremony will be given by “two extraordinary women,” Vermont Air National Guard Lt. Col. Laura Caputo and BUHS senior Breanna Sheehan.
Caputo has served 23 years in the Air Force and Air National Guard. She was commissioned as an officer in 1992 after graduating from the University of Illinois. She then attended Air Force pilot training at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi. Caputo spent the next 15 years flying T-37, KC-10 and C-21 aircraft in support of multiple operations throughout the Middle East and Europe.
In 2008, Caputo re-trained into a new career as an intelligence officer. She currently serves as the senior intelligence officer for the Vermont Air National Guard's 158th Operations Support Squadron.
Sheehan was a principal in the 2015 Memorial Day event honoring Brattleboro's Civil War dead, as well as in the November 2015 recognition dinner for the Vietnam War dead.
Costello said Sheehan is an exemplary student and athlete at Brattleboro Union High School and has been accepted at Dartmouth College, which she will attend in the fall.
The Brattleboro American Legion Band will perform at the ceremony, and representatives of the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Marine Corps League will participate.
Costello said the public is cordially invited to attend both events.
Connecting the generations
The Memorial Day ceremonies are particularly meaningful to Costello. Now 70, he was a member of the Class of 1963 at Mount St. Joseph High School in Rutland, and part of the generation inspired by the idealism of President John F. Kennedy.
“That was the season of hope,” Costello said. “We heard Kennedy's inaugural address and we were inspired to serve our country in any way we could.”
The generation stirred by JFK was the generation that fought and died in Vietnam. Costello is struck by the fact of the 11 men killed in action from the Brattleboro area, five died in 1968.
“That was one of the worst years in our history, when it seemed that everything was falling apart,” he said. “But these men, they were our heroes. They all believed in, and gave their lives for the America we all believe in, for freedom and democracy.”
Now, Costello said, there is a new generation of idealists.
The BUHS Class of 2016 have never known a time when the United States wasn't at war. They were toddlers when the World Trade Center came down, and the Afghan and Iraq wars began.
“But they have that idealism, that commitment to the America and its ideals, that the Class of 1963 had,” Costello said. “I know the times are different now, but the young people of today haven't lost their idealism and their dream of a better nation.”