The weather turned from ominous to glorious as New Yorkers celebrated Memorial Day with backyard barbecues, parades, picnics and an awesome show of military might on the Hudson River.
More than 1,200 spectators and dignitaries crowded aboard the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum’s flight deck yesterday to watch sailors unfurl a 100-foot flag as a team of fighter jets roared overhead.
Among the spectators were veterans of the retired Navy carrier. Nearly 300 of its crewmen were killed in battles with the Japanese fleet and from kamikaze raids during World War II.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz likened the sacrifices and deaths of the Intrepid’s crews to deaths of thousands of soldiers in the Civil War battlefield.
“We cannot forget what the heroes of Gettysburg, the heroes of the Intrepid, all of our veterans, living and dead, who went in harm’s way and risked everything, have done for us,” Wolfowitz said.
Joining the city’s celebration of Memorial Day were thousands of sailors and Marines here as part of Fleet Week.
Brooklyn held the city’s longest-running Memorial Day parade, the 138th annual celebration through Bay Ridge to Fort Hamilton.
But the city’s largest parade ran along Northern Boulevard, from the Nassau County border through Little Neck and Douglaston in Queens.
Firemen, military units, kids and marching bands reveled in the afternoon sunshine.
Mayor Giuliani, marching near the head of the parade, was greeted along the route by spectators wishing him a happy birthday – his 57th.
The grand marshal, retired U.S. Army Gen. William Ward Jr., even broke out in song, singing “Happy Birthday” to the mayor at a press conference at the parade’s end.