Veteran's Day Parade
JROTC Marches in Veteran's Day Parade
BY MAYA JARRELL NOVEMBER 25 2014
For most students, all they know about Veteran’s Day is that they get the day off school. However, the day is really celebrated in order to commemorate the end of World War I, and to honor the veterans who fought in it.
To celebrate the veterans, the city of Greenville had its annual parade. The Veteran’s Day parade featured motorcycles, floats, marching bands and drill teams. This year the Rose JROTC showed their appreciation by marching in the parade. “We organized the whole parade, and we’re also going to have a platoon marching in it,” senior Emily Harris said. “The color guard at the front of the parade is going to be all Rose students.” Harris says that everyone in JROTC had been practicing for the parade for a long time, and are doing very well. “We’re going to call out cadences,” sophomore Keshon Newton said. “The purple fire trucks are going to be there, almost everyone’s going to be there for the Veteran’s Day parade.” A cadence is a phrase or set of phrases that is called out as the members march. It has a uniform rhythm with a set number of steps per minute. For some students, Veteran’s Day is important for them because they have family members who have served in the war. “My grandfather was a World War II veteran. He was like a doctor,” senior Ella Jordan said. Jordan, who had never been to the parade before, went for the first time this year. Many students attended the parade for the first time this year. The JROTC have been preparing marches and cadences for the Veteran’s Day parade all year. “We’re pretty much just going to do column right movements and stuff like that,” sophomore Destiny Adams said. Column right movements are a type of march that is designed for movement. Hundreds of people lined the streets of downtown Greenville on the day of the parade. With so many people watching and waiting for an entertaining show, the younger members of JROTC may have been feeling the pressure. Despite the Veteran’s Day parade being so popular some of the more experienced members of JROTC felt confident and secured in their parade performance. Harris, who has been in all of the Veteran’s Day parades since she has been in high school, is feeling confident about her performance. This year will mark her fourth Veteran’s Day parade with the JROTC. Adams also felt confident about her performance in the parade since she had already marched in the ECU Homecoming parade with the color guard. Four members of Rose JROTC lead the Veteran’s Day parade with a march. The rest of the JROTC marched as a group later in the parade line-up. Harris lead as everyone else called out cadences as they marched. “Everybody’s worked really, really hard to do it and these are kids that have only been here for just a couple weeks, so they’ve come a really long way and we’re expecting a good show,” Harris said. |
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