Flags
American Legion Post 141 of Atlantic Highlands, its Commander, Peter Doyle, students from MAST, the Marine Academy of Science and Technology at Sandy Hook, and Rumson Fair Haven High School’s Veterans Appreciation Club together with other volunteer replaced more than 700 flags on the graves of military veterans last week, in preparation for Memorial Day. All the flags were placed Saturday, May 20, despite a torrential downpour and cold temperatures.
Doyle heads up the annual event each year, assuring that flags placed in the past and now faded are removed, disposed of properly and replaced with new flags as positive signs the veterans buried at Bayview Cemetery from the time of the revolution to the present are always remembered.
Students from both high schools set up routines where they removed the old flags and replaced them; when that part of their community service was completed, they then separated the flags from the poles, and brought the faded flags to the Flag Disposal Box at the Public Works Yard in Atlantic Highlands.
Jocelyn Velasquez, who has been volunteering for the pre-Memorial Day event for more than 20 years, brought her two year old daughter, Nevaeh along, introducing her daughter to the importance of remembering the fallen. The two placed the flag at the burial site of Jocelyn’s grandfather, Bernard Frotton, a Marine Corps veteran who earned two purple hearts while serving and was a former councilman in the borough.
Post Commander Doyle and his wife-to-be also showed the importance they place on remembering those who served the country and are buried at Bayview Cemetery. The couple were at the cemetery for the two hour duty Saturday morning, and Doyle oversaw the completion of the flag replacements before the couple left to prepare for their wedding. Doyle and the former Barbara Bateman were married at St. Agnes Church later that afternoon.
Also volunteering for the morning were former Atlantic Highlands Councilwoman Jane Frotton, widow of Bernard Frotton, and a supporter of the Legion program since its inception, Deborah Appello, a member of the Atlantic Highlands Board of Education, Legion vice commander and former Army Capt. Ellen O’Dwyer, JJ O’Shaughnessy and Lenny Izzo, post members, and CDR Tracie-Smith Yeoman USN (ret) senior Naval Instructor at MAST.
As has been their tradition since starting to volunteer for the Bayview flag exchange program, the MAST cadets stopped to pay honor at the tombstone of Sgt. Fred Hay, who received a Congressional Medal of Honor for service during the Indian Campaigns of 1874 and died in Highlands in 1914.
The post provided lunch and beverages for the MAST and Rumson Fair Haven students at the Senior Center at the Yacht Harbor after the event.
