Solemnity and Dissonance at Palm Coast’s Memorial Day Ceremony as Congressman Invokes 1.2 Million Casualties

Speaking to an audience of dozens assembled at Palm Coast’s Heroes Park for the city’s traditional commemoration of Memorial Day shortly after first light Monday, Vice Mayor Theresa Pontieri described how an initial draft of the speech she and the city’s Communications Department worked on hit the wrong note.

“It tried to make me relatable to today as the daughter of a veteran and as the sister of two service members, tried to make me relatable as the wife of a nearly 20 year firefighter,” Pontieri said, hosting the ceremony as she’s had to do a few other recent occasions in place of an absent or unwilling mayor. (Mike Norris was on vacation Monday.)

“But the truth of the matter is, I can’t relate to today,” Pontieri said. “I can’t relate to the Gold Star families that sit here before us, and I thank God for that. I thank God that I’ve never had to hear the taps for my family.” Her voice broke. “I thank God that I’ve never had to hear that piercing toll of the bell for my husband.” She’d scraped the speech.  She thought it would better honor the day’s tradition “to provide a history of how we got here.”

She spoke of the day originating with Decoration Day after the Civil War and “the early stories of groups of women visiting the grave sites of fallen Civil War soldiers to decorate those sites with flowers,” and the decision by Maj. Gen. John Logan a few years after the end of the Civil War to issue a general order that became Memorial Day.

Congress formally established the commemoration in 1971, when it moved it to the last Monday in May. Congress did so the same year 2,414 Americans died in Vietnam and Cambodia, three years after President Nixon had campaigned on the strength of a fabricated “secret plan” to end the war in Southeast Asia only to broaden it, and 11 years before Maya Lin’s monument to that war’s 58,000 fallen was dedicated in Washington, and when each name was read in a candlelight ceremony at the National Cathedral.

”I think the names that are being read are of men who died for freedom just as surely as any man who ever fought for this country,” President Reagan said at the time after leaving the cathedral.

That many details couldn’t be part of the vice mayor’s speech of course, any more than could be a jarring if silent dissonance when U.S. Rep. Randy Fine addressed the Heroes Park crowd in his first appearance at a public event since his election on April 1.

“Today,” said the congressman–a former casino executive elected to the seat formerly held by Mike Waltz, a former Green Beret–“too many Americans will spend the day thinking that this day is about just the start of summer, or a day to have barbecues or watch sports or just be able to just have a good time, and that is not the purpose of Memorial Day.”

He spoke of the 1.2 million Americans lost to combat or related causes in numerous wars of the last 249 years. “A stupendous number, if you think about it,” he said, four days after he invoked one of those wars in a television interview seemingly to justify stupendous Palestinian casualties to end the war in Gaza: “In World War II,” he’d said on Fox News, “we nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here,” here being Gaza, an enclave of 2 million people the exact geographic size of Bunnell.

In Palm Coast, he invoked a different million: “Despite the overwhelming number for each one of those families, it is an unspeakable loss and an unspeakable amount of pain to have been replicated over a million times,” he said.

His remarks days earlier had caused at least some Gold Star families usually present at the Heroes Park ceremony not to attend. Asked over the weekend about the propriety of inviting Fine to the ceremony, Pontieri had written in an email that she would not assume what Fine had meant.

“I will only say that my focus, and everyone else’s should be on our fallen heroes and the families that miss them everyday. I am confident Congressman Fine will keep them in his focus during our Memorial Day Ceremony,” Pontieri wrote, subsequently adding: “ Words matter, particularly for those of us in leadership roles. I think it’s incumbent upon us to choose our words carefully, understanding that even if we don’t mean exactly what we say in a literal sense, others may take our words at literal face value, and that can have consequences. I am sure all of us have been misunderstood at one time or another–particularly when discussing a tough topic that is often times influenced by emotion and passion.” (Fine was being interviewed Thursday in the wake of the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington by a Chicago man who said “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” as he was being arrested.)

Fine also appeared at the county’s ceremony later that morning. County Chair Andy Dance did not respond to the email asking him about the propriety of Fine’s appearance. Asked the same question shortly after the Palm Coast ceremony, Dance said: “I didn’t think it was worth responding to.” He said he wouldn’t comment on what Fine said in a television interview.

Fine did keep his remarks focused on the occasion. He listened somberly as Council members Ty Miller, Charles Gambaro and Dave Sullivan, veterans all, read the names of local members of the armed services who lost their lives. Moments later, surrounded by an unusually heavy guard of Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies, Fine was part of a procession to a wreath placed by the park’s memorial to Purple Heart recipients.

“Thank you, Congressman Fine for those very thoughtful remarks, and thank you again for joining us today,” Pontieri had told him after his remarks, with the kind of characteristic grace she’s displayed in the last few months as the city’s quasi-mayor.

“I think often of the Gold Star families who sit silently during ceremonies like this, many of them holding back tears, and I’m sure all of them holding on to precious memories. Their strength is humbling and their grief inexplicable,” Pontieri told the audience. “My prayers are that God will give you peace.” She added: “May we live lives worthy of their sacrifice, may we support and uplift the families still serving and may we always remember that in our freedom, we are bound together by gratitude and love from the most wonderful country in the world, we are bound in the same way that so many men and women were bound many years ago when they started a tradition that we now call Memorial Day.”

Here are the names of fallen service members as read by each Council member at the ceremony:

Council Member Ty Miller:

Master Sergeant Michael George Heiser – United States Air Force
Lance Corporal John T Schmidt – United States Marine Corps
Sergeant Zachary J. Walters – United States Marine Corp
Corporal Raheen Tyson Heighter – United States Army
Sergeant Luke T. Stanford – United States Army
Staff Sergeant Robert Steven Martin O’Neill – United States Airforce
Joseph Orsillo – United States Army
Charles Chapman – United States Marine Corps

Council Member Dave Sullivan

Sergeant Daniel Vasselian – United States Marine Corps
Corporal Caleb Erickson – United States Marine Corps
Lance Corporal Christopher Grant – United States Marine Corps
Jay Hatfield – United States Air Force
James M Treber – United States Army
LT Frederick V. Stapleford – United States Navy
John Matthew Ring – United States Navy

Council Member Charles Gambaro:

Colonel Lemuel Huston McCormack, Jr. – United States Air Force
Chief Petty Officer Paul Daniel Fuller – United States Navy
Benjamin Putnam Calhoun – United States Air Force
Peter J Descartes Sr. – United States Air Force
Private Stephen John Uychich – United States Marine Corps
Jeffrey Smithson – United States Army
Arland Aden Osborn – United States Army