Veterans honored, remembered today
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- November
- 11
Garrett Bucksath, Michael Pagano Jr. and Kevin Keelty were in Nicky’s Pizza in Suffern yesterday when the village’s Mayor John Keegan and Police Chief Clark Osborne ran into them.
The three men — all members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division — ended up being invited by Keegan and Osborne to attend the Veterans Day ceremony in Suffern this morning.
The three friends were sorry they hadn’t brought their uniforms for the brief trip, but that was okay, said the many of the scores of people who attended the gathering. The young mens’ presence, their service, were more than enough.
Bucksath is 20. He hails from Cincinnati and is soon to be deployed for his second tour in Afghanistan. Pagano, 23, of Stanhope, N.J., and Keelty, 21, of Suffern, are both headed back for their second tours in Iraq next year.
Charlie Calotta, commander of the Ramapo Valley Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2973, which co-sponsored the event along with the Fromm-Maxwell-DeBaun American Legion Post 859, said the day was important to him as an Army veteran of World War II and the Korean War.
“When you’re in the service and you’ve served with men” who’ve ended up injured or dead, you never forget those comrades, he said, “and it’s something you want perpetuate.”
The brief ceremony unfolded this morning in front of the Soldier’s Memorial on Washington Avenue.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 5:34 pm by Suzan Clarke. 
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