Message from Josh Losardo | June 1, 2024
It was disappointing that the rainy weather did not allow for Scotch Plains to have its annual Memorial Day program.
Scotch Plains is always focused on honoring and remembering our Veterans. Memorial Day is an important date on the calendar; our annual tradition goes as far back as anyone remembers.
Every May, the town places banners along our busiest corridors with images of current and former residents who served our country in the armed forces. The banners stand tall and proud, a silent sentinel bearing the weight of remembrance.
On Memorial Day, weather permitting, we gather near our World War I monument, just off from the Village Green. Among the crowd are Veterans who live amongst us, some wearing uniforms or hats adorned with medals that glint in the sunlight. Families bring young, curious children, holding American flags. Our township joins together in solemn unity to honor fellow Americans who gave their lives for our country.
Most families have stories of sacrifice to share. Mine focuses on my grandfather, Louis Losardo, and how he valiantly fought in the Pacific for the U.S. Army in World War II. My grandfather never offered to speak of his wartime service. My brothers and I would have to pry him to hear wartime stories, and he kept them deliberately short. In my twenties, I sought records from the U.S. Army to try to piece together what his service was like and learned he was awarded for, amongst other things “running across a fire swept rice paddy charging headlong into a hail of enemy fire… advancing to within twenty yards of the Japanese… firing burst after burst from his automatic rifle covering the evacuation of the wounded until his ammunition was exhausted. Then crawled back, resupplied, and resumed his hazardous position until remaining casualties were removed to safety.”
My grandfather’s war record sits in my office as a daily reminder that our freedom is not free.
My grandfather was fortunate to live through the war, raise a family and enjoy the freedom that he and others fought for on foreign battlegrounds. So many others were not as lucky. More than 400,000 young Americans died in World War II. Nearly 60,000 service members died in Vietnam and nearly 7,000 in the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War. So many sons and daughters, husbands and wives, never came home or lived long enough to raise families of their own.
And that is why it is so appropriate to pause the last Monday of every May to honor and remember the sacrifice so many made. We honor the fallen. We cherish their memory. And we do so to ensure that their legacy and this great country long endures.
For all Veterans reading this message, as well as families with relatives who never returned home, I thank you – on behalf of a grateful Township – for your service and sacrifice to our great country.
In memory of many; in honor of all…
