Table of Contents
Get our free local reporting delivered straight to your inbox. No noise, no spam — just clear, independent coverage of Marblehead. Sign up for our once-a-week newsletter.
The chair behind the red rope at Abbot Hall is more than 200 years old, Veterans Services Officer Roseann Trionfi-Mazzuchelli told the crowd Wednesday. It is meant to stay empty.
It stands beside a small round table set for one, between an American flag and a black flag honoring prisoners of war and those missing in action, on the main floor of the hall. A brass plate fixed to its top rail calls it “a memorial to those who served in our military of our great nation, but have not returned home to us.”
Minutes before the chair was dedicated, Trionfi-Mazzuchelli stood at the lectern and read 20 names. They were Marblehead veterans who have died in recent months, each followed by a branch of service and, for some, a war.
The names belonged to the town’s recent dead. The chair belonged to those who never came home. The keynote speaker spent much of his address on a third group: the people in the folding chairs.
A narrow segment
Marblehead’s Veterans Day observance drew a crowd that filled the main floor and lined the balcony. At the lectern, two Scouts in tan uniforms saluted while a Cub Scout and a Scout in a red neckerchief held their hands over their hearts. Select Board member Moses Grader read the governor’s proclamation for the day. Young singers in black performed from the side of the hall, and a uniformed bugler played after the audience was asked to stand.
The keynote speaker, retired Army Col. Todd Bajakian, was introduced as a veteran of deployments to Grenada, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He told the audience Veterans Day is “a day of gratitude, but it should also be a day of reflection.”
His reflection had a number behind it. Citing a Defense Department analysis of fiscal 2022, Bajakian said Massachusetts was among the states most underrepresented in the military when measured against its share of the nation’s adults. He offered the finding “not as a criticism of the Commonwealth or its citizens.”
Since the draft ended in 1973, he said, the country has relied on people who choose to serve. When that choice falls to a small share of Americans, he asked, how does everyone else stay connected to what national defense costs?
He named the state’s colleges, its economy and its professional opportunities as genuine strengths that can also make military service look like a less likely path. He said he was not arguing that everyone should enlist. But he said the burden of a national military “cannot rest indefinitely upon a narrow geographic, demographic or economic segment of the population.”
Bajakian built much of the address on the creed of his alma mater, Norwich University in Vermont, reciting its line that “the true measure of success is service rendered to God, to country and to mankind.” He also reached for local history, crediting Gen. John Glover’s Marblehead fishermen with twice saving the Continental Army.
Then he turned to the hall.
“Veterans have demonstrated their commitment through their willingness to serve,” he said. “However, the responsibility to preserve the nation does not belong exclusively to those who have worn the uniform. It belongs to all of us.”
He addressed the younger generation, “particularly here in this hall,” and asked them to think seriously about what service means. He closed with a request: “Let us honor those who serve not only through our words today, but through the character of our citizenship tomorrow.”
Set for one
Before she began, Trionfi-Mazzuchelli asked families to forgive her if a loved one’s name was missing, saying she had not learned of every death. The 20 entries ran from World War II to Vietnam and from the Navy Reserve to the Air National Guard.
The list included Frances Stirgwolt, a World War II veteran who died in September less than a month short of her 102nd birthday, according to her obituary. It included Glover Broughton, a Marine who served aboard the USS Midway. His obituary says he was named for the general Bajakian had just invoked and was descended from him.
A note printed at the bottom of the list carried her apology: “I apologize if I missed anyone.” It asked families to contact Veterans Services when a veteran dies, in part because survivors may be eligible for benefits.
The POW/MIA display that followed was, she said, the work of many hands. Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2005 donated the stands and flags. A Gold Star spouse donated the table. She gave her own children a list of what the table needed and sent them out to find it.
The display will stay in the hall permanently, she said, “so we never will forget those who have not made it home,” along with veterans who died of service-connected disabilities.
A reading then walked the audience through the table’s symbols. It is round, set for one and marked with a single red rose and a yellow ribbon, along with salt on the plate and an inverted glass.
Marblehead has its own names for that chair. Three men from town remain unaccounted for, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency: Marine Pfc. Pembroke T. Hamilton, lost at Tarawa in 1943; Navy Lt. Warren W. Boles, lost over the Gulf of Tonkin in 1968; and Air Force Col. Henry E. MacCann, lost over North Vietnam the same year.
Earlier, a man in a VFW cap stood behind a Cub Scout and fitted a pale blue neckerchief around his neck. At the end, the post commander asked every veteran in the room to stand. Then he asked their families and significant others to stand with them.
The chair will have company Friday. Trionfi-Mazzuchelli said the family of a private killed in action in Italy in 1944 will receive his Purple Heart at Abbot Hall at 5 p.m., 82 years later. She said the public is welcome to attend.
BEFORE YOU GO … Our reporting remains free and open to all. It is sustained by readers who choose to support it — by contributing so that routine, document-based local reporting continues without paywalls or promotional framing. Right now, 133 readers support The Marblehead Independent with monthly or annual contributions. Click here to become an Independent member.
