A trumpet sounded at 10 a.m. Monday in the Barker Neighborhood.

Friends and family of the deceased recite the National Anthem at a Memorial Day service at Clinton Cemetery. About 100 people attended the event, which included Taps and a gun salute by the Dorsey-Liberty Post No. 14 of the American Legion on Monday.

It wasn’t the shiny kind of instrument found in orchestras and military bands. It was a green, yard-long plastic bugle – the kind commonly heard in the stands at sporting events.

The horn blast by resident David Thiel was a signal that the neighborhood’s annual around-the-block Memorial Day parade was about to begin. The lineup included a fire truck, a UFO on wheels, Scottish terriers, a couple on a double bicycle, a woman carrying a giant American flag on a pole, and a toddler beating on a drum as he rode in a red wagon.

“We’ve been doing this for 10 or 12 years, and we say that every year,” Thiel said. “It’s kind of a celebration of the freedoms that people have died for.”

At the grave of his wife, Mary, retired Kansas University professor Joseph Kuo bows his head in remembrance at the Pioneer Cemetery. Kuo sat quietly and trimmed flowers on Memorial Day at her grave, which is located among other deceased KU faculty and staff at the cemetery.

The parade, with about 100 participants, was one of the more unusual ways area residents marked the holiday. At cemeteries throughout Lawrence, flags decorated grave sites as a way to honor military veterans, and people visited their loved ones’ graves to pay tribute.

“Memorial Day is more than a holiday,” said Col. William Vonderschmidt of the Kansas National Guard, who spoke to a crowd of more than 100 people at Memorial Park Cemetery, 1517 E. 15th St. “It is a day when our nation should express gratitude to the soldiers who gave real meaning to the phrase ‘All-American.'”

The day had a special significance for people with family buried at Memorial Park. After years of maintenance and management problems, the city recently took temporary control of the cemetery last week.

“I’ve waited 40 years to hear that,” said Jean Snedeger, 77, who said that in the 1980s she nearly fell into an open grave that had been dug but not covered at the cemetery.

Wielding rifles, members of the Dorsey-Liberty Post No. 14 of the American Legion stand as their fallen comrades, friends and family are honored at a Memorial Day service at Clinton Cemetery. The post played Taps and fired shots in memory of the deceased Monday at the cemetery near Clinton.

Snedeger and her husband, Okie, 79, took in the Barker Neighborhood parade from their front porch at 17th and Rhode Island streets, then went to the Memorial Park ceremony and visited family members’ graves.

Okie Snedeger, former owner of a coin-operated laundry at 12th and Connecticut streets, wore his navy-blue “World War II Veteran” baseball cap. He served in the U.S. Navy for three years during the war, fought in the battle of Okinawa, and married Jean while on a 72-hour pass.

“I think about all the good men that served during war, and that I was one of the lucky ones that came back,” he said.

Jean Snedeger still remembers the fear she felt every time she saw a bicycle messenger riding down the street as she waited for her husband to come home from the war.

“If the telegram was edged in black, it meant they were missing or dead,” she said.

One day, a messenger rode up to the neighbor’s home. She heard the woman inside scream after learning her son was missing in action. To this day, she said, the son hasn’t been found.

“I think of that every single Memorial Day,” she said.

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