The annual Santa Clarita Valley Memorial Day Ceremony is set for Monday, May 26, at Eternal Valley Memorial Park Mortuary in Newhall. Beginning at 10 a.m. on Memorial Day, the public is invited to honor and mourn those who died while serving in the United States military.
According to Bob Kellar, president of the SCV Memorial Day Committee and a U.S. Army veteran, the event will include the customary Condor Squadron flyby, a performance by the Santa Clarita Valley Concert Band and a keynote address from Maj. Gen. Matthew P. Beevers of the National Guard, who is adjutant general of the California Military Department.
“It has been kind of a tradition for many years that we’ve had our congressman speak,” Kellar said during a telephone interview earlier this month. “We reached out to our new Congressman, (George) Whitesides, and he’s been kind enough to say that he will come. Now, he’s not our keynote speaker. The general will be the keynote speaker. But the congressman will also say a few words, and I’m delighted he’s going to do that.”
Kellar said he was pleased to have Beevers delivering the keynote, adding that it goes with this year’s National Guard theme. He offered some background on Beevers, saying he’d never seen a general who did not have an impressive record. Beevers’ achievements didn’t disappoint.
According to Kellar, Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, helped arrange for Beevers to speak. Schiavo is set to introduce the general.
Kellar anticipates at least 800 people to turn out for the event. It’ll take place in the upper area of the cemetery near the main building, but Eternal Valley plans to offer golf cart rides to assist guests up and back down the hill. Parking for the event will be allowed throughout the cemetery.
According to Kellar, various Scout troops from around Santa Clarita will go out to the cemetery before the ceremony and place American flags on the grave sites of the veterans there.
“It’s a beautiful sight to go out to the cemetery and see thousands of flags,” Kellar said, “It’s so incredibly important for the young people, meaning the various Scout troops — both boys and girls — to be able to come out and be a part of this. There’s a recognition of these young people about what has happened in the past so that we have this wonderful country, the United States of America. That’s only because of some things that have transpired in the history of this country. I can’t think of a better way for young people to be able to get an appreciation for it than to be able to participate and assist in placing the flags at the grave sites.”
Kellar expects the Memorial Day ceremony to be about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes long.
According to the event schedule, the Condor Squadron out of Van Nuys Airport, made up of World War II North American AT-6 airplanes, is set to fly overhead in formation earlier in the day.
In previous Memorial Day events, there has been the reading of the names inscribed on Eternal Valley’s Veterans Memorial Wall. Kellar said they will not be doing that this year simply because there are now too many names.
“We’ve got about 800-and-some-odd names on that wall,” Kellar said. “It is no longer a 45-minute exercise. But we are looking at how we could possibly modify it in future years, maybe going back and reading the last 100 names that have been inscribed each year.”
Those whose names have been inscribed on that wall, Kellar has said in the past, aren’t necessarily buried at Eternal Valley, but could’ve simply been residents of the area at one time or another.
Kellar reminds people that the Memorial Day event is not just for veterans. It’s for everyone and anyone in the family — even children — to remember and honor the men and women who paid the ultimate price for their country.
“I’ve always had a very strong feeling about the importance of our military, and I’m very honored to have served in the Army,” Kellar said. “I’ve been on this board (SCV Memorial Day Committee) — I took about a two-year sabbatical about a dozen years ago, but other than that, I’ve been on this board since about 1991. This event has been something that I have always felt good about.”
For more information about the event, call Eternal Valley at (661) 259-0800.
