Ensuring our freedom: Sumter holds annual Veterans Day celebration with parade, ceremony, meet and greet – Sumter Item

Kids clamored over candy tossed from floats as a few handfuls even soared to the open second-story windows of Sumter's soon-to-be first brewery, construction workers taking a break to watch the parade pass by beneath.

Hundreds gathered along Main Street Monday morning for the annual Veterans Day parade that marched toward the old courthouse, where Sumter County's official ceremony took place and culminated with a food-filled celebration and meet and greet.

The ceremony has been held annually since 1996, according to Valerie Brunson, director of Sumter County Veterans Affairs. She has been with the Sumter VA for eight years and started the parade and subsequent meet and greet six years ago.

This year was the biggest yet.

"We always come here for this parade. It's a good one," said veteran Andre Laperle, daughter on his shoulders and son at his side.

The parade featured about 100 groups, and parade-watchers waved to airmen and soldiers from the 20th Fighter Wing and U.S. Army Central, both of which are headquartered at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter. They were entertained by marching bands from Sumter's Sumter, Crestwood and Lakewood high schools and Clarendon County's Scott's Branch High School.

The youngest attendees covered their ears for honks from the Sumter County Sheriff's Office, Sumter Police Department, Sumter Fire Department, Sumter Utilities and even the loud horn coming from the small Jamil Shriners truck.

Brunson, Sumter's VA director, said the city and county work hard to stay true to Sumter's motto of "uncommon patriotism."

Veterans permeate Sumter. They are business owners, and they are doctors. They are lawyers, community leaders, elected officials, teachers, historians, taxpayers.

"Honoring them is something I love to do," Brunson said. "We've got to remember what they've done and the sacrifices they have made for our country."

'The strength of our nation'

Brunson and her team wrangled the day together, complete with five ROTC groups, representatives from all the veterans organizations in Sumter, a veteran-owned shaved ice truck, multiple Girl Scout troops and a Sumter firefighter and Continental manager dressed as Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam.

Lt. Gen. Terry Ferrell, commanding general of USARCENT, which provides land domain oversight, support and services for U.S. Central Command in the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia and traces its storied lineage to World War II Gen. George Patton's Third Army, served as the parade's grand marshal and ceremony's keynote speaker.

Veterans Day demonstrates the "strength of our nation," he said.

It doesn't matter the color of the uniform. The chairs at the front of the crowd spilling across the old courthouse lawn, reserved for veterans, sported a spectrum of colors. Dress blues and camouflage greens. Tuskegee red and Marine red. Black and gold, navy and white, purple.

When he started a roll call for veterans to stand up for each war they served in, just a few stood at the beginning. Then Vietnam was called. Then the same veterans started standing again.

Veterans Day is about more than those from different military branches coming together. Mayor Joe McElveen, himself a son, son-in-law, nephew and grandson of a veteran and a veteran himself, said the day is about celebrating every veteran who served, no matter the capacity or marked impact.

Sumter has produced such notable veterans as Medal of Honor recipient George Mabry Jr., who as a lieutenant colonel in World War II led an attack through Hurtgen Forest in Germany before retiring from the Army in 1975 as a major general. The "strength of our nation" lies in both people like Mabry and in every single veteran's contribution.

The spectrum of Sumter's veterans was represented on the courthouse steps at the end of the ceremony. Each year, the Sumter County Veterans Association randomly selects about 30 veterans to be specifically honored. Each received an American flag and a proclamation.

Special this year, veteran Ruth Hoyt gifted each of the honorees a patriotic blanket. The 97-year-old was a flight nurse in World War II, and, with only the help of a walker and a helping hand nearby, she said she is "still going strong."

Veteran Laperle, who took his kids to the parade, said he enjoyed seeing all the ROTC cadets participate. Veterans like when younger generations are interested in the military.

He was stationed at Shaw Air Force Base from 2011 to 2015 before stints in South Korea and Hurlburt Field near Fort Walton Beach, Florida. He now works for Caterpillar in West Columbia but comes to Sumter's Veterans Day program because of the community feel.

His daughter, Ava, 4, said she liked the music. His son, Joey, 10, couldn't decide what he liked most because it was all good, he said. The Sumter Utilities vehicles were cool, though.

Sumter's biggest parade yet represented a community that has grown in the decades since these veterans took up arms. It's a community big enough to line the streets but small enough still for a wife to grab a kiss through the driver's window of a cop car rolling down the parade route. Small enough for an airman to break rank and shuffle to the curb for a quick high five from his son.

The patriotism may be uncommon, but its presence is familiar.

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Ensuring our freedom: Sumter holds annual Veterans Day celebration with parade, ceremony, meet and greet - Sumter Item