Bristol parade salutes those who answered the call to take a stand for freedom

A bright autumn sun lit the annual Veterans Day Parade in downtown Bristol on Saturday, glinting off brass instruments, medals pinned to dress uniforms and shoes spotlessly shined.
The notes of “America the Beautiful” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag” hit the air, mingling with roaring and coughing car engines, shrill urges from children wanting drivers to sound their horns, and “thank yous” uttered to veterans from the spectators who lined both sides of State Street.
Participants riding on floats flung candy that was instantly vacuumed up by children. A baby-blue 1929 Ford carrying World War II veterans reared back with each acceleration, its haunches slamming into the ground to general amusement. Musket fire – from men dressed in Revolutionary War garb – cracked piercingly, the spent powder wafting down the street in sulfurous waves.
The sun and the celebratory atmosphere seemed to defy the pall cast over the nation by Thursday’s tragedy at a U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, Texas, where a psychiatrist is accused of shooting to death 13 soldiers and wounding more than 30. Not that the tragic event wasn’t on the mind of veterans.
“The military has got to come together a little closer and be more vigilant,” Larry Murray, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam and member of the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 40, said as the procession from Bob Morrison Boulevard swung onto State Street. “Just because we’re marching down this street in freedom, it doesn’t mean we don’t need to be on the alert.”
Marching alongside Murray, Army Veteran James Keeling concurred. “You ain’t safe anymore,” he said.
Sgt. John Hawthorne, of the Elizabethton-based 776th Maintenance Co., rode toward the front of the parade in a Ford GT coupe. Three weeks ago, Hawthorne finished a tour in Iraq, where he has been for the past three years.
The parade’s grand marshal, Hawthorne, 44, has been in the Army since he was 20.
“It does my heart good to be back,” he told the crowd that gathered to honor veterans at the Bristol War Memorial.
Hawthorne, too, was deeply troubled by carnage at Fort Hood.
“I can’t understand what would drive someone to go that route,” Hawthorne said in an interview. “Just for fear of deployment?”
All officers, he noted, have a choice to serve. “Why would he dread the inevitable, to serve his country?” Hawthorne said.
But Hawthorne and other veterans Saturday beat back the Fort Hood tragedy – and the heavy toll of American military commitments – by spotlighting the positive developments abroad and examples of heroic soldiers.
“The truth is, the American media is not allowed to divulge all the good that happens in Iraq,” Hawthorne said from his perch in the coupe. “Iraq has changed for the better. People are getting paid for jobs, which never used to happen. The whole economical structure has changed,” he said, attributing that to the work of American soldiers.
The parade flowed east on State Street: the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office, leading a black Mitsubishi with a flame decal and a tag marking it as “stolen from drug dealer;” the Corvette Club with a battalion of hot-rods at least a dozen strong; the Korean War Veterans Association; the Sullivan South High School Reserve Officers’ Training Corps; the Riverbend Baptist Church; and a black bus captioned “A Soldier’s Spirit,” decked out with Prisoner of War logos. Another entry was an old French boxcar or “Gratitude Train” – a thank you several generations old for U.S. food assistance after World War II, large enough to hold 40 men or eight horses, said Bristol native and World War II veteran Avery Keessee, 82.
The procession emptied out at the site of the War Memorial, where a booth was set up to sign Christmas cards for soldiers. More than 100 residents assembled to listen to veterans and thank them for their service. It was a crowd for whom Patrick Henry’s Revolutionary War rallying cry – “Give me liberty, or give me death!” – uttered by a former POW, is still an applause line.
Wiley Webb Jr., a retired Air Force captain and now real estate broker in Bristol, addressed the crowd and spoke to what impressed him: the presence of so many high school ROTC units, and the old veterans who can still get into their Class A uniforms.
Warfare has changed a lot with the development of new weapons, Webb said.
“One thing that has not changed is the heart and motivation of the soldier, airman and sailor,” Webb said, launching into a discussion of heroism on the battlefield.
He closed by asking those present to pray for the soldiers and families affected by the Fort Hood shooting, but also offered up the kind of inspiring anecdote he said was not reported by the news media: the story of a man named Ed Freeman, who in Vietnam flew dozens of his wounded comrades – trapped by machine gun fire – to safety, returning 13 times.
Freeman received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest honor for a combat serviceman, and died in August 2008.
Almost everyone gathered at the war memorial Saturday had some reason to take pride in military service: veterans, their spouses, children and family.
One veteran, Bristol Tennessee Police Sgt. Robert Caudill, proudly grabbed a reporter to brag about his daughter, an 18-year-old newly minted Marine, whom he and his wife picked up from Parris Island, S.C., on Friday.
Madison Herr, a graduate of Sullivan East High School, is now bound for Camp Geiger, N.C., for combat training, and will then attend legal administration school at Camp Lejeune.
Asked what drew her to the Marines, she said it was the unique pride associated with that branch.
“Boot camp was hard,” she said. But the motivation classes and letters of support got her through.
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