Honoring all who have served: Annual Veterans Day Parade slated for Friday, Nov. 11 in Buckhannon

Monica Zalaznik
October 30, 2022

BUCKHANNON – The Veterans Day Parade will march through Main Street at 10 a.m. Friday, Nov. 11 in celebration of Veterans Day.

Kathy Stalnaker and Ed Smith, representing VFW Post 3663, attended the Oct. 27 Consolidated Public Works Board meeting to discuss the upcoming parade and secure the sound system at Jawbone Park. Veterans Day is a day to pay tribute to all who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

“We’ve been trying really hard for this last year to work more with the community, so people know what the VFW and the American Legion is; there’s a real lack of general knowledge out there,” Stalnaker said. “People still think it’s a bar, and we haven’t been a bar for a really long time, so we’re trying to be more family-oriented, more veteran-oriented, obviously.”

She said the VFW has an upcoming Goldstar Memorial ceremony this Saturday, Oct. 29 in Rock Cave, and they hope to keep participating in events within the community.

The Nov. 11 Veterans Day Parade will travel down to Jawbone Park for a brief ceremony, so Stalnaker asked to use the park’s sound system.

“We’ll make sure we get down there and get it operational – it’s already built-in, we just have to get it up and working,” Skinner said. “I think there were some technical issues with it last year, but I don’t know if everything we needed was down there that day.”

Skinner said most of the speakers had to yell during the ceremony because it was so well-attended, with about 400 or 500 people showing up.

“As soon as we break from there, then we go to the VFW for a luncheon and it’s free to all veterans and their families,” Stalnaker said. “We had a really wonderful turnout last year; I was really excited. The West Virginia Wesleyan bands marched and that was really nice, and we did have a horse show up — I didn’t know about that — but apparently that was how it was done in the past; people showed up that wanted to be in the parade.”

Before adjourning, the board also took the following actions:

Approved an event request for the Buckhannon Fire Department Christmas parade, slated for 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2, 2022, and a street closure request for Main Street.

Approved an event request for the Blast from the Past Car Show from 5:30-11 p.m. July 29, 2022, and a road closure request for Main Street.
Approved merging and rescheduling the November and December CPWB meetings to one meeting at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 7 due to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.