Memorial Day

Politicians throughout New Hampshire took time on Memorial Day to honor local veterans.

Former congressman Jeb Bradley (R-Wolfeboro) spoke at the Milton Memorial Day event and attended the closing Ceremony for the Vietnam Memorial Moving Wall in Ossipee. Second Congressional District candidate Grant Bosse (R-Hillsboro) went to Pat's Peak in Henniker to participate in the Russell M. Durgin Memorial Road Race.

  Steiner for CongressP.O. Box 2008Concord, NH   03302FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:Congressional candidate and military veteran R. James "Jim" Steiner honored all military veterans today by marching with fellow American Legion members in the Memorial Day Parade.  Said Steiner, "every armed forces member cannot be here to march, but the cheers from patriotic American families along the parade route will always warm ones heart. It makes you proud to be a veteran."  Steiner is a former Army Green Beret and is seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Paul Hodes for the 2nd Cong. District seat.  He is the only military veteran among the candidates for the 2nd Cong. District Republican nomination.

Just a month before Memorial Day 1989, at a time U.S. soldiers were not often in harms way, I received the news that my Special Forces instructor, COL Nick Rowe, had been killed in a vehicle ambush in the Phillipines while serving as a U.S. military advisor.  It made Memorial Day that year a different event because Nick Rowe was the first soldier I had known personally to be killed while serving our country. Years earlier, as a Boy Scout, I had been part of an honor guard for soldiers killed in Vietnam.  However, as sad as the occasions, I had not known the soldiers personally.  Nick Rowe was real to me. I had last met with him just prior to his deployment to the Phillipines.  Only four years later, in 1993, MSG Gary Gordon was killed in Somalia trying to rescue Berlin, N.H. native CW4 Michael Durant.  Gary had been in my Special Forces unit.  Memorial Day since always includes memories of these soldiers whose lives were taken while they served in our armed forces.