Norwood To Honor Veterans With Memorial Day Week Of Activities

NORWOOD, MA - As part of Norwood's 150th anniversary celebration, the town has created a weeklong series of events to honor its veterans

Norwood's trbute to veterans will kick off on Sunday, May 22, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at four locations. Memorabilia on loan from Norwood veterans will be on display at the Norwood Senior Center, located at 275 Prospect St., as well as in Memorial Hall in Town Hall at 566 Washington St. Greeters at Memorial Hall will also tell visitors about the history of Memorial Hall and offer tributes to Norwood veterans of World War I.

Storyboards depicting Norwood veterans’ experiences, including some designed and researched by Coakley Middle School students will be on display at the Senior Center and the Norwood Civic Center at 165 Nahatan St. The Civic Center will also offer information on veterans benefits and America’s VetDogs, an organization to help those who have served our country honorably live with dignity and independence. A shuttle will run between the Senior Center and the Town Common.

Meanwhile, reenactments of World War I, the Civil War, and the Revolutionary War will be provided on the Town Common by the Colonial Boys.

Free tickets will be distributed, and volunteers will validate attendance at each of the four locations, setting up a prize drawing for people who go to all four of the stops. For more information, contact Anne Haley at anne@norwoodma150.gov.

The tribute moves to Norwood High School at 3 p.m., where the Parkway Concert Orchestra will deliver a celebration of Norwood through music. In addition to famous and familiar scores by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Edward Elgar, Georges Bizet, and Aaron Copland, the event will salute veterans with a special performance of Richard Rodgers’s "Victory at Sea." All audience members must wear a mask while in the building.

Based in Norwood, the Parkway Concert Orchestra was founded by West Roxbury music teacher Ferdinand Fassnacht in 1945 and continues to this day under the direction of Thomas G. Kociela, who is also the music director of the Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra. Orchestra members reside in Norwood and surrounding communities and range in age from their teens to their 80s. For more information, visit the orchestra’s website at www.ParkwayConcertOrchestra.org.

This concert is sponsored by the Norwood 150 Committee and is supported in part by a grant from the Norwood Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

On Saturday, May 28 at 8 a.m., flags will be placed on veterans’ graves at Highland Cemetery at 320 Winter St. At 3 p.m., the new Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial will be dedicated at the corner of East Hoyle and Washington streets. The black granite bench will be inscribed with the names of the nine Norwood men who died during the war. The keynote speaker at the dedication will be retired Navy Captain Thomas G. Kelley from South Boston, a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

On Memorial Day, Monday, May 30, activities will begin with a memorial service at St. Catherine of Siena Church at 549 Washington St. at 8 a.m. At 9 a.m., the American flag on the Town Common will be raised and flown at half-staff. Ceremonies will then be held at 9:30 a.m. at the Old Parish Cemetery at nearby 480 Washington St.

Participants in the Memorial Day parade will then gather across the street at the corner of Washington and Howard streets, and the parade will step off at 10 a.m.

The parade will feature Police and Fire Honor Guards, Norwood veterans, the Norwood High School marching band, the Colonial Boys Fife and Drum Band and the Colonial Pipers Bagpipe Band. The Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts and Brownies also will participate.

The parade will conclude at Highland Cemetery, where the final ceremonies of the day’s event will take place at 11 a.m. For more information, contact Norwood’s Veterans’ Services Director Ted Mulvehill at tmulvehill@norwoodma.gov.

The tributes of this week emphasize those who have served comparatively recently. Norwood also has many signs, plaques, statues and other objects that honor Norwood veterans of all eras and are available year-round. They are outlined on this website.

Prepared by George Curtis, currently Vice-President of the Norwood Historical Society, this page gathers relevant information about Norwood’s military veterans and the town’s ongoing efforts to memorialize their contributions. The work gathered on that webpage continues the earlier research of noted local historian and philanthropist Fred Holland Day, who prepared the list of veterans from colonial times through World War I that it still prominently displayed on plaques in Town Hall.

The Norwood Historical Society’s on-line archive of includes a number of relevant stories and can be located at https://norwoodhistoricalsociety.org/category/military.