Members of the Dorchester Memorial Day Parade Committee are shown aftre a recent planning meeting in Adams Corner. Top row (l-r): Cliff Olsen, past national commander, VFW; Richard McKeen, Old Dorchester Post; Neal Wholey, McKeon Post; Arthur F. Desmond, commander, Lower Mills Post. Bottom: (l-r) John J. Conley, Walsh Post A.L. 369; Salvatore Abruzzese, senior vice commander Walsh Post; John O. Scannell, chairman, Walsh Post A.L. 369; Dr. Francis S. Murphy, Old Dorchester Post, Officer of the Day. Photo: Ed Forry/Reporter


By Bill Forry
Managing Editor

A time-honored observance of the terrible toll paid by this neighborhood on the world's battlefields will be staged once again this Monday in Lower Mills and Cedar Grove. The Memorial Day parade will step off from Dorchester Ave. and Richmond Street at 10 a.m., following its traditional route along Dot Ave., Gallivan Boulevard and Adams Street to Cedar Grove Cemetery. Hundreds of local veterans are expected to participate in the annual exercises, highlighted by a speech by a Marine general.

A committee of local veterans' groups organizes the morning program, following in the footsteps of successive generations of vets dating back to the Civil War. The ceremonies at Cedar Grove Cemetery, believed to be the oldest in the city of Boston, typically draws a large turnout from the surrounding neighborhood.

Longtime organizer Dr. Francis S. Murphy, who will serve as the officer of the day, says that three bands will lead the parade this year: Northeastern University, Mass Maritime and the Thomas Kenny School. The host post for this year's parade is the William Gary Walsh American Legion Post #369 , named for the Lower Mills man who was killed in action in World War II and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Colonel Ronald J. Johnson, a native of Duxbury and commanding officer of the 24th Marine Expeditionary unit, will give the keynote address at Cedar Grove Cemetery.

Col. Johnson served as the Current Operations Officer and the Operations Officer for the 2nd MEB in Iraq.

He has served abroad in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Lebanon and the Sinai, and in Southwest Asia in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Immediately following the observances at Cedar Grove Cemetery, veterans will gather at Dorchester Vietnam Memorial on Morrissey Boulevard for a remembrance service. This week, volunteers from the neighborhood's Vietnamese community joined with American veterans in cleaning up the waterfront park where the memorial is situated. The Vietnam Memorial ceremony typically begins at about 12:15 p.m. on Monday.

The day's services at Cedar Grove will be dedicated in particular to William Gary Walsh, who was killed in action on Feb. 27, 1945 while fighting on Iwo Jima's Volcano Islands. "Red" Walsh was a veteran of combat in the Solomon Islands and Guadalcanal and by 1945 was promoted to gunnery sergeant, leading an assault platoon with company "G" in the third battalion of the 27th Marines, Fifth Marine Division.

According to his Medal of Honor citation, Gunnery Sgt. Walsh was killed when he threw himself on a Japanese grenade that had landed among his comrades. A memorial square, a city park in Lower Mills, and a stretch of the Southeast Expressway have also been named for the local hero.

Dorchester's modern Memorial Day observances continue a tradition begun by members of the now-defunct Benjamin Stone Grand Army of the Republic post #68 in Fields Corner in 1868. In the post Civil War days, the holiday was known as Decoration Day. The apex of the modern day Memorial Day observances in Dorchester, by most accounts, was 1958, when Sen. John F. Kennedy gave the keynote address at theVictory Road Armory.