Residents, school administrators and local officials will honor and celebrate the community’s veterans during Toms River’s annual Veterans Day parade.
The parade will take place on Nov. 12 beginning at 9:45 a.m. The parade will start at the Toms River Shopping Center on Route 37 and travel south on Main Street (Route 166), then head east on Washington Street.
There will be a post-parade ceremony in front of Town Hall that will include the placing of a wreath on the veterans monument.
Bob Larned, who chairs the Veterans Commission, anticipates another successful day.
“We get a great response from the community for the parade,” said Larned, who has served as the chairman for five years.
Larned said the bands from Toms River Intermediate South, Toms River Intermediate North, Toms River Intermediate East, Toms River High School North, Toms River High School South, Toms River High School East and Barnegat High School will participate in the parade.
The Toms River High School North ROTC unit, the Jackson Memorial High School and Jackson Liberty High School ROTC unit and the Brick Township High School ROTC unit also will participate in the event.
Other organizations involved in the parade include the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the Marine Corps League, American Legion Post 129 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6063.
“Veterans Day is a day to celebrate the sacrifices that citizens of the country have made over the years. It is a mostly happy occasion when we celebrate this day. We have so many people willing to fight for the freedoms we enjoy,” Larned said.
He said Veterans Day and the parade are therapeutic for him.
“I am a Vietnam veteran. When I came back from Southeast Asia, it was so different back home. We were warned not to wear our uniforms off our base. For years there was a feeling of being unappreciated. Now it is so nice to have people come up to you and say, ‘Thank you for your service,’ whether they served or not. Hearing that takes a lot of the sting out of the feelings I had when I got back home,” Larned said.
He said it is heartwarming for veterans to be recognized by the community even when it is not Veterans Day.
If the weather forecast is not good, the student participation in the parade on Nov. 12 will be canceled by 5 p.m. on Nov. 11. A ceremony will take place in Town Hall if the parade is cancelled.