Good weather and easing pandemic fears bring out crowd for Croydon’s Memorial Day parade

The Harry S Truman High School marching band drum-thumped, hundreds of little American flags fluttered, and the Kensington String Band strummed on a mile-plus Memorial Day parade route in Croydon, Bucks County.

It was a glorious and cloudless late May morning. Spectators lined the route in lawn chairs, beneath shady minivan back gates, or on foot for the 45-minute parade, eager to commune and briefly put the world and nation’s trouble aside.

“It was a little faster this year, but it was still good,” said a shirtless and exuberant Joe Williams, 43, who had “Croydon” tattooed on his lower back in big letters. “I’ve been coming to this parade for 20 years.”

Croydon residents don’t know how long they’ve had the parade on State Road. But they agree that it’s a very long time — since, some said, State Road was a dirt road. The parade begins at State and Cedar Avenue and shoots to Bellevue Avenue and the Joseph A. Schumacher VFW Post 1597, whose members and auxiliary organize it. The Croydon VFW calls itself the “oldest post in Bucks County,” chartered in 1928.

Some towns claim to be the first to hold a Memorial Day parade, among them Boalsburg in Central Pennsylvania. But the first official national celebration took place on May 30, 1868, at the Arlington National Cemetery, where Union and Confederate soldiers were buried.

Originally Decoration Day, the event was later designated Memorial Day, according to the Library of Congress. In 1971, federal law changed the observance of the holiday to the last Monday in May and extended honor to all soldiers who died in American wars.

In Croydon, the parade also is a celebration of the tight-knit community near the Delaware River in an industrial part of Bristol Township.

“This means a lot to this town because it brings people together and showcases what you believe in Croydon,” said William Kocher, who has lived in Croydon all of his 63 years. “It’s a way to honor the first responders and the bands.”

People had stayed inside because of the pandemic, and now “all of a sudden you have these parades coming back. I think it’s wonderful,” he said.

Robin Yarnell, the parade chair and auxiliary secretary, said the event was a family affair with the rest of the post and auxiliary. Her sister Kim Knopf is the auxiliary president and her granddaughter, Kyleigh Yarnall, was the “poppy queen.”

Yarnell said their father, Robert Kingrea, a Korean War veteran who died in 2009, had asked his daughters to be involved in the nearby Eddington VFW post auxiliary. When that post’s auxiliary closed, they shifted to Croydon, Yarnell said.

The parade is “on the uprise because of the pandemic,” Yarnell said. “It’s patriotism. No. Not so much patriotism as a sense of unity. People want to see a parade. Before it was routine. People would stand at their doors and wouldn’t come out. Now they have chairs.”