Editors note:  This week's column by Mayor Marvin is the speech she gave on Memorial Day 2024

By Mary Marvin, Mayor of Bronxville

May 29, 2024: Good morning and welcome to Bronxville’s 102^nd annual Memorial Day Parade and commemoration.

I am grateful for the foresight of the Village citizens who came before us to plan this ceremony – a public demonstration to honor our fallen heroes and place our Veterans center stage so we never take for granted those most deserving of our gratitude.

I welcome those here today sharing in this commemoration

Our clergy, police officers, fireman, Public Works staff, my fellow colleagues in Village government and from the Village of Tuckahoe and Town of Eastchester an incredible demonstration of bipartisanship to honor our veterans.

And to all the groups who marched with us – especially the children – and of most importance, our veterans not only for your service and valor but as representatives of all veterans past and present and especially the fallen – who gave the supreme sacrifice – Our Heroes.

And our Grand Marshal John Priesing 52 year resident with his wife Madryn and son John a K-12 alum of our school.

A graduate Amherst College, Harvard Business School and a proud veteran. John served as a gunnery officer on a destroyer escort operating out of Guam and Pearl Harbor during the Korean conflict and upon war’s end, worked at the Bureau of Naval Personnel in D.C. as an advisor in gunnery operations. John served our country with distinction and did the same for Bronxville and surrounding communities in over a half century of volunteerism.

Right here in Bronxville John has served on the Village’s Ethics Committee and Zoning Board, Chairman of the Lawrence Hospital Board of Governors and the President of the Bronxville School Board and beyond Village borders, John was President of Children’s Village in Dobbs Ferry and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Westchester Community College Foundation.

Today is a day about honoring heroes. We most importantly honor our military heroes - those who have demonstrated acts of courage, true valor on every continent and are laid to rest all over the world. John, you and our fellow veterans are also heroes – we just need more of you in all walks of life.

We live in an age desperately needing heroes, befitting heroes – no time has offered such peril or prize.

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. As Ghandi said, “A true hero is not defined by their strength, but by their ability to lead and inspire others. Heroes are people who demonstrate humanity when others have long walked away.”

Every generation needs heroes because when brave men and women take a stand, the spines of others are stiffened.

Going back to the Odyssey, written in the 8^th Century B.C., Odysseus was a hero because he embodied the virtues that Greek society cherished and provided a model for Greek people to emulate.

We need Odysseus right now!

The need for heroes has never faded. But these days the classic hero seems to be an endangered species or obsolete relic, depending on who you ask. Let us not subscribe to this.

Let us actively seek out heroes and live our lives in a heroic way because heroes are simply ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary.

Let this Memorial Day be a rebirth of our commitment to live a life of character – to endeavor to be our best selves - heroes to our family, our country and the causes we care about.

As Abraham Lincoln said in his first inaugural address in 1861, “Let us appeal now to the better angels of our nature and step forward where others decline to tread.”

We can send a message, live a message to be a hero like those we honor today by emulating their lives of commitment, optimism, love of country and their fellow man.

Let us on this Memorial Day thank our military heroes first and foremost but also thank our heroes in every walk of life who help to transform organizations and societies and help us envision the way things “ought” to be and not what they are and accept nothing less. I challenge you today to find new heroes, emulate a hero and be a hero to someone. Let’s find our better angels.

I close by asking God to bless our men and women protecting us today and in days past. We don’t know them all but we owe them all.

God Bless America