Madera honors those who “paid the greatest price” in Memorial Day ceremony

Henry González, a 76-year-old Vietnam U.S. Army veteran, didn’t mind the heat during the Memorial Day ceremony at the Courthouse Park shortly before noon Monday.

“This brings us all together,” said González, who was among about 150 who showed up for the 40-minute ceremony organized by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1981.

“It brings a family with loved ones, and you see people from out of town,” he added. “It’s a blessing to see everyone here, to commemorate this, to honor our fallen.”

It was the death of a Madera man early during the Vietnam war that led González to join the army. He was born and raised in Madera.

“It started to boil over a little bit and I figured I got to do something for my country and my hometown,” said González, who spent a year in Vietnam. “We lost one of our young ones that went to Vietnam before me. He didn’t make it.”

Veterans like González, who stayed in the army for three years before heading to Nevada “to do cowboying,” made up a big part of the Memorial Day ceremony.

Madera native A. Michael DeCesare also signed up for the military early. The foster child changed the date on his baptismal certificate so that he could legally join the U.S. Navy at age 15½ in October 1944.

He served aboard a Navy submarine in the southern Pacific during World War II. Following the war, DeCesare re-enlisted with the U.S. Navy and worked as a salvage diver.

DeCesare, the ceremony’s honored guest speaker, pointed out several facts during his talk:

▪  The practice of honoring those who have fallen in battle dates back thousands of years by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The first public tribute to the war dead was recorded in 431 BC by Greek Athenian General Pericles.

▪  Memorial Day was founded in the U.S. by a group of freed slaves following the Civil War.

▪  Congress, in 1968, passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as a federal holiday.

▪  As of May 2020, the U.S. Department of Defense considers 81,900 Americans as prisoners of war or missing in action.

“The flag and these memorials serve as places to remember loved ones,” said DeCesare in his 9-minute talk. “Lest we forget, not only the thousands who over the years paid the ultimate price with their lives to keep our great nation as an example to the world.

DeCesare lost two close friends, both 18, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He also lost a cousin on June 15, 1944 during the invasion landing of Saipan.

“His body was never recovered,” said DeCesare.

“Say a sign of prayer, of remembrance for those surviving families and friends whose sons and daughters paid the ultimate price for you and me and the rest of the American people and our great nation, as the losses and scars remain forever.”