Redondo Beach honors war dead with Memorial Day tribute
Members of each branch of the armed services commemorate their war dead, placing poppies on the new Veteran’s Memorial. Several hundred people attended the annual Memorial Day tribute at Veteran’s Park on Monday. The ceremony, which included a keynote address by Mayor Mike Gin and remarks from special guest Col. Arnold Streland from the Los Angeles Air Force Base, concluded with members from each branch of military service laying poppies along the memorial. Lt. Col. Tom Lasser, a retired U.S. Army helicopter pilot who was one of the key leaders in establishing the new memorial, explained the significance of the poppies. In France following WWII, millions blood-red poppies sprung to life atop battlefields in Flanders where thousands of war dead were buried. Navy veteran John Simpson reads “In Flanders Field” at Redondo Beach’s Memorial Day Tribute. Photos “Poppies would pop up in the blood-soaked ground,” Lasser said. A Canadian solider named John McCrae penned a poem called “In Flanders Field” in 1915, the day after watching a 22-year-old friend day before. John Simpson, a Redondo resident who served in the Korean War as a Marine, read the poem aloud near the end of Monday’s…
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