With bagpipers, buglers and the Naperville Municipal Band playing somber notes and members of the Honor Guard firing their rifles into the air, Naperville honored its fallen heroes Monday at Central Park.
It was the first full Memorial Day commemoration in the city since 2019. The event was canceled two years ago and scaled down last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When it comes to supporting our veterans in Naperville, Naperville doesn’t disappoint,” Pablo Araya, past commander of Judd Kendall VFW Post 3873, told the dozens of spectators gathered on a hot, sunny day. “There’s not a better, more patriotic, safer, cleaner, greater town in the world.”
Memorial Day isn’t technically a holiday, which would indicate that it honors a single event, Araya said. Rather it recognizes “countless tragic, heroic deaths and actions that we, who are the beneficiaries of those sacrifices, commemorate with a day of remembrance,” he said.
Recent Neuqua Valley High School graduate Yashas Sardesai spoke about the connection between honoring fallen heroes and the state of politics, namely that we should be paying more attention to local ones. It’s what the founders — whose constitution our military continues to fight for — intended with their focus on self-governance and decentralized power.
But now, he noted, people often focus more on the national political scene and ignore what their city councils or school boards are doing, when those decisions often have much more impact on their day-to-day lives.
“As we gather here today on this Memorial Day, it’s important that we take the time to honor those veterans that laid down their lives in service of our country,” Sardesai said.
“But I’d argue that we need to go one step further — not just honoring their commitment, but actually putting (into practice) the principles that they fought for. We need to all make sure that we are involved, to truly make this a democracy for the people, by the people.”
The 17-year-old’s speech recently won the 2022 State Oratorical Contest sponsored by the American Legion.
Joe and Gloria Caruso, of Naperville, recalled how they’ve been attending the ceremony for decades, ever since their son, David, was a young boy.
“In third grade, he wrote a paper about joining the military. Now that was the last thing I thought about in third grade,” Joe Caruso said. “By eighth grade, he wanted to be a Marine. And by the time he joined, he wanted to be a Force RECON Marine. Force Recon is like a (Navy) Seal would be, but they’re the Marine version. He was also a Ranger. And he was airborne.”
David Caruso was killed in Iraq during the Battle of Fallujah in 2004. He was 25 years old.
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“He would tell me, ‘Mom, everyone should do something for this country? I’m joining the Marines. Dad was in the Navy.’ He said, ‘What do you do for your country?'” Gloria Caruso recalled. “I told him, ‘I gave them you.'”
Giles Bruce is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.