A tradition of honor
"It's a wonderful day for it," Ray Jones said of the weather for Monday's Ironton-Lawrence County Memorial Day Parade.
Temperatures were hospitable and in the 70s and a light breeze blew throughout the event, which featured 10 divisions and had enough spectators to triple the city's population for two hours.
Jones, serving in the grand marshal position for the event, said his main reason for involvement is "because of my respect for our veterans."
"I have high respect for those who have served our country and can't say enough for them," Jones said.
The procession kicked off at 10 a.m., with the first division, announced by banners carried by Scout Troop 106, of Ironton, including the riderless horse, a gunnery salute and local veterans.
The other top parade leaders were in this division, including parade commander Lou Pyles and Charles Wiseman, 100, a World War II veteran.
In the staging area of the parade, Father Wayne Morris, of the Ironton Catholic churches, was standing near a group of students from St. Joseph High School.
Morris, who has led the church locally for three years, said this is his third time seeing the parade.
"I love it," he said. "It's so great to see the people come out and support their community. And to honor those who lived for our country."
Behind them in the lineup was a group from Royersville Missionary Baptist Church, who said they have been taking part in the event for several years.
Altogether, they had about 30 people with their float. In addition to supporting the parade, they all had shirts promoting their upcoming Bible School, set for June 16-20.
Adjacent to them was the Nurses Honor Guard of the River Cities, making another return to the parade.
Dorothy Spillman, co-founder of the group, which conducts an honorary service at the funerals of nurses throughout the Tri-Sate, said their organization had won the Civic Award from the parade committee earlier in the week.
She said they were there in memory of Lily Porter, one of their members who died in February.
"She was an asset to nursing," Spillman said.
In addition to honoring veterans and nurses, Spillman said their group had another purpose in the parade.
In their float, they were carrying an automated external defibrillator, provided by UK King's Daughters.
"So if anyone goes down and needs it, you have it, and a whole group of nurses here," she said.
Two hours after stepoff, Pyles and members of the parade committee, such as Rich Donohue, were directing vehicles and marchers at the conclusion of the parade.
"It's been great," Pyles said of the event, which she estimated drew about 30,000 this year.
She said in some areas downtown, the spectators were several rows deep.
"And we love to see that," she said. "We saw a lot of returning people and the parade went well. And I think everybody had a great time."
You Might Like
News
Ashland woman killed in UTV accident
News
Telling our story
News
This year's leaders (WITH GALLERY)
News
Memorial Day lineup announced
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
4 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Ask the Remodeler: What side are you on?
Advertisement Wood siding: Virtually every house built in New England before World War II has wood siding. It could be clapboards, cedar shingles, or something called shiplap, which resembles clapboards. There are a few variations, but those would cover the vast majority of area homes. We have many clients who want to maintain the architectural integrity of their homes and find a perfect match for their original siding. The main concerns here are that these products are expensive to buy and install and, you are committing yourself to a lifetime of maintenance. We advise clients to have their house touched up by a painter every 5 to 7 years. That will catch issues before they become full-blown problems, like rotted wood or a leak. The side of a house that gets the most sun will fail faster, so particular attention should be paid there. Advertisement You always want to keep trees and vegetation off the house, and that is doubly important with wood siding. The only wood siding we install is Fiber cement siding is tough and will last far longer than wood. Fiber cement siding: This material has been making inroads everywhere in the New England area, and for good reason. Fiber cement siding, when properly installed, has some pretty significant advantages over wood or vinyl. The product is tough and will last far longer than wood. It actually hasn't been around long enough to know just how long it lasts in New England weather. Fiber cement is a modern, safer version of the asbestos siding that was very common in the post-WWII housing boom. That siding has been on homes for 75+ years, and when painted, looks as good as the day it was installed. The bet is that fiber cement will have similar longevity. Another bonus for fiber cement is that it comes pre-painted, and matching touch-up kits and caulking are used during installation, so it saves a lot of money in maintenance. The number of color choices are quite substantial, so finding one you like is easy. If you don't find a color you like, it can be ordered primed, and you can paint it any color. Advertisement For me, I think fiber cement's best attribute is the variety of styles it comes in. You can have clapboards (smooth or textured face), shingle siding, shiplap, or vertical V groove siding, to name a few. This allows you to integrate into an existing style, complement an existing style, or simply start new. We recently did a project that had the entire original house done in vinyl siding, which actually looked nice. We wanted a more robust but maintenance-free exterior, so we opted for the fiber cement shingle look in gray on a large addition that we did on the back of the house. The combination of gray shingles and white 'clapboard' is classic New England coastal design and the finished product was quite nice. They blended beautifully. A light-colored acrylic latex paint can give a great facelift to existing vinyl siding. Vinyl siding: We do not install much vinyl in and around the city. Most homeowners who want maintenance-free exteriors are going with fiber cement. It is, however, a viable alternative where the budget is tight and the need to blend aesthetically into a particular neighborhood is not critical. A quality vinyl siding installed correctly can last many years, and is by far the most cost-effective. Vinyl also comes in different styles, from clapboard to a cedar shingle look, even vertical siding. The color palette has increased over the years, so there is more variety. Some drawbacks with vinyl are that it is not very durable and it does not integrate easily with existing siding and trim. Vinyl does hold its color far better than it used to and believe it or not, can be painted if the color has faded too much. A light-colored acrylic latex paint professionally applied can give a great facelift to an existing house. Advertisement Trim: Like siding, trim options have improved dramatically over the years. There are a number of great products on the market, such as PVC and recycled composites, that are more eco-friendly. Even when we are using wood siding, we are almost exclusively using composite materials for the trim. By trim, I mean mostly the corner boards of a house, window and door trim, and the soffit/fascia/rake details that wrap around the roof. This would also include the trim around a set of stairs, especially if they are close or at ground level. These trim elements of the house tend to be the first things that experience rot and go unnoticed until it's too late and you have problems underneath. The trim around the roof lines is notorious for harboring rot that no one picks up on because it is so high up. The repair costs can be substantial. Composites avoid those issues, saving a lot of headaches down the road. The composite trim does not come in colors (unless you want white), so they do need to be painted and maintained over the years. The paint holds up better for composites than for wood, so the timelines are much longer. You do need to use acrylic latex paint that will move with the seasonal expansions and contractions of the material. The composite trims nowadays also have a large variety of accessory profiles to add flair to your home. These include crown moldings, bed and band moldings, ceiling moldings, corbels, and brackets for porches. We use composites for porch ceilings, you can get V-groove or beadboard to mimic the original style of the house. Advertisement There are several companies that make fiberglass or aluminum gutters that when painted, look just like the old wood gutters that are common in this part of the country. Many historical commissions will accept these new materials and profiles, knowing that they will outlast anything made from today's wood and that, in the end, they are doing a better job of maintaining the character of the building. In short, the good news is that there is a lot to choose from when siding and trimming your house. The bad news is, you have to sift through a lot more options to know what's right for you, your budget, and your home. A professional remodeling company can walk you through all the pros and cons to settle on what's right for you. Have some fun with it! Mark Philben is the project development manager at in Cambridge. Send your questions to . Questions are subject to editing.
New York Times
4 hours ago
- New York Times
That Old Bookcase? It May Be Your Dream Shoe Organizer.
One of the biggest benefits of using a bookcase instead of traditional shoe storage is that you can create a quasi-store experience in your closet, Jones said. She said she urges her clients to organize their closets using a merchandising approach, since she believes this lets them 'shop their closet' instead of buying more. It's also an opportunity to create a more-inviting and aesthetically pleasing setup that showcases your personality and taste. For example, to mimic a store display and maximize storage, organize and divide shelf storage by using risers or clear shelves. This will allow you to stack up two or more pairs of shoes within one shelf. You can also organize shoes by color or style, so it's easier to go straight to what you're looking for. The adjustable shelves let you adapt your closet to each season, fitting in anything from beach sandals and heels to knee-high boots. Frances Solá-Santiago/NYT Wirecutter Depending on the size of your shoe collection, you can also take a seasonal approach. With the Billy's adjustable bookshelves, it's easy to customize which shoes you display in the cold and warm months. Personally, I like to space out shelves during the fall and winter, so I can fit bulkier, taller shoe styles, including knee-high boots and snow boots. When spring arrives — which usually means shorter footwear like kitten heels and flat sandals — I like to stack shelves closer together to fit more shoes. For the latter scenario, you may need more shelves. For most of its Billy bookcase designs, IKEA sells additional shelves as singles (for under $10!), and that makes it easy. Although I've loved the simple, adjustable design of the Billy bookshelf, remember to allow your lifestyle to inform which bookcase and setup work best for you and your shoes. 'The cognitive load gets reduced,' Jones said. 'You don't feel overwhelmed or stressed when you group it by behavioral context rather than by type.' As much as I dream of the perfect Architectural Digest –worthy shoe closet (complete with a library-style ladder, velvet cushioned shelves, and lighting I can dim to my taste), my alarm clock always snaps me back to reality. And for now, I'm content with my $50 solution. This article was edited by Katie Okamoto and Hannah Rimm. From sofas to storage boxes to Swedish chocolate, these are the IKEA items that Wirecutter's staffers love. Whether your closet is tiny and unruly or massive and overflowing, we've tested and found the best solutions for keeping everything in order. After considering roughly 50 shoe racks and cabinets, here are our four favorite ones for organizing shoes in closets and entryways. It turns out that my partner and I very much needed a dedicated storage solution for our 40-plus pairs of shoes.
Indianapolis Star
5 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
LOST GYMS: 'When you watch the movie Hoosiers, it was all that here and more' in Freetown
FREETOWN – The origin of the Freetown gym — how it came to be, how it was utilized and how it remains a center of this quiet community of 370 people in Jackson County — is a story of small town Indiana and the state's growing love affair with high school basketball. The year was 1930. For several years previously, the Freetown basketball teams practiced on a dirt court in the schoolyard or in a small gym that had been converted for basketball by Sherman Berry, a local businessman. Berry, the owner of flouring mill in Waymansville, hired Freetown carpenters Bill Cornett and James Huber as engineers to construct the new gymnasium, built from the materials of the old Tobrocke flour mill. In 1930 and '31, during the height of the Great Depression, Freetown children watched their fathers haul the timbers into town and stack them next to Berry's sawmill, then construct the gym, complete with dressing rooms, showers and a furnace. 'It was as loud as any gym you would go to today,' said Russell Fritz, a 1955 Freetown graduate. 'I don't think you could hold a candle to the atmosphere here. When you watch the movie 'Hoosiers', it was all that here and more.' Berry owned the gym, renting it to Freetown for games and practices, along with neighboring Houston and Van Buren Township until it turning it over the school in 1948. The gym was not only a home for basketball, though. It hosted graduation commencements, proms and senior plays. During World War II, bond rallies were held in the gym. In 1944, when Freetown's own Robert McKinney was killed in action in Italy, hundreds attended his funeral service in the gym. 'I have often wondered what our town would have been like without the gym because so many things went on there,' Irene Forgey McNiece told the Jackson County Banner in 2003. 'You could call it Freetown's hub.' The 1924-25 team won the only sectional championship in Freetown history, helping to spur the need for a gym. Fred Brock took over as coach the following year and would later be succeeded by Edgar Sprague, a 1924 Freetown graduate who would go on to coach and teach in the Freetown system for 46 years. Freetown was home to several quality teams after the gym opened in 1931. For the 1947-48 season, upgrades were for an electronic scoreboard and expanded dressing rooms with showers in the basement of the building. Previously, the wooden scoreboard reflected only the minutes remaining. The timekeeper signaled the end of the game by firing a blank pistol or blowing a horn by mouth. Sprague coached Freetown from 1932 to 1948, missing three years due to his service in World War II. He was instrumental in bringing Crispus Attucks, all-Black Indianapolis school having difficulty scheduling games, to play games at Freetown (Freetown also played at Attucks). During games against rival Vallonia and Attucks, fans climbed the roof to watch the games through the windows. 'There were quite a few of them up there, too,' 1948 graduate Dean Zike said several years ago. 'Not everybody could get in those big games.' Attucks was not well known at the time as the powerhouse program it would become during the 1950s when the Tigers won three state championships and featured one of the state's all-time great players in Oscar Robertson. Years later, after Attucks won its second state championship, Attucks coach Ray Crowe was guest speaker at Freetown's athletic banquet. Fritz was not yet in high school at the time but was in attendance the night Attucks first came to play at Freetown. 'Fred Brock (then the principal) told them they could come down here,' Fritz said of Attucks, which also played small schools like Medora, Vallonia and Clearspring. 'This place was packed. They had people standing on the roof and looking in. They continued to play for several years because of the friendship between Ray Crowe and Fred.' That Freetown team, led by left-handed post player Bill Brown, finished 18-7 but lost by 20 points to Seymour in the sectional championship game. There was intermittent success to follow for the Spartans, who won the 1957 Jackson County championship — still noted on a sign on the outskirts of town. The next year, Freetown made it to the sectional championship but lost to host Seymour, 74-58, and finished 20-4. By the late 1950s, the Freetown gym was rarely used for home games. The Spartans mostly used the larger, more modern gym at Cortland. 'It was a pretty good gym compared to what everybody else had,' said Bill Mann, a 1953 graduate, said of the Freetown gym. 'It had a good floor in it. When you bounce the ball, it would bounce back to you. This was a good gym. You couldn't seat a lot of people but it seated enough I guess.' Freetown graduated its final class of 16 seniors in 1964 before consolidating into Brownstown Central. 'Nobody wanted the school closed because it was hard on the town,' Fritz said. 'The town goes downhill a little bit when you lose your school.' The gym remained. It continued to serve as a community hub for many years, undergoing a $550,000 renovation with the aid of a grant in 2003. The grant allowed the community repair the east side of the gym, which was beginning to collapse. 'Some people complained about (the renovation) when it was done, but they were glad after it was done,' Fritz said. 'That money was available for grants and we could apply for it, so that's what we did. It was well worth it. It's a good feeling that it's still around. Everything in today's society is just thrown away. It could have been torn down just as easily when we got the grant to have it done.' When the renovation was complete, Fritz said one former player — who was originally against the idea of refurbishing the gym — sat in a corner of the gym in tears when it was complete. 'He sat down there and just cried,' Fritz said. 'It was a good thing we did it. It will be good for a lot of generations, I think.' The Freetown Elementary School was closed in 2011, another tough blow to the small community. But the gym remains a constant source of pride, still hosting annual class reunions, family reunions and community events. And, yes, the occasional basketball game. Just like Sherman Berry, Bill Cornett and James Huber would have hoped nearly 100 years later. 'They are getting a lot out of it,' Mann said. 'It did a lot of good for the community.'
