Wednesday
September 18, 2024 
Memorial Day in Doylestown and across the region brought brilliant blue skies, parades, picnics and moving tributes to the nation’s fallen soldiers.
On a Doylestown Borough street, it brought “Freedom on Franklin.” A unique block party on Franklin Street, the annual event takes time out from chatting with family and neighbors to remember the veterans who gave their lives in the country’s wars.
“It’s a powerful moment of reflection, remembrance and gratitude,” said Ed Lopez, one of the event’s organizers. “I think about what we have here as a country.”
Fighting back tears, the U.S. Army combat veteran spoke of the vets who have died by suicide, saying they too should be remembered. “They died on the battlefield, but they didn’t know it.”
Lopez is active in bringing attention to veteran suicides, as well as homelessness and mental health concerns of vets. In 2017, a group of vets and civilians partnered with the National Alliance of Mental Health Bucks County and marched from Washington Crossing Cemetery to the Bucks County Courthouse.
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 6,146 veterans died by suicide in 2020.
Lopez said he was asked by a Franklin Street resident to help neighbors hold a small Memorial Day ceremony during their block party to pay respect to those who sacrificed everything for their country.
“I jumped at the chance to help and brought along a number of my veteran friends,” said Lopez.
This was the seventh anniversary of the special gathering and it included a display of the Combat — or Battlefield — Cross. With a pair of combat boots at its base, a rifle propped at its side and a soldier’s combat helmet at its top, the cross has historically been used in war to “honor and respect the dead,” with the fallen soldier’s dog tags hung from the cross.
On Monday, the names of the 22 Bucks County armed services members killed during the Global War on Terror were read and replicas of their dog tags were hung on the Combat Cross, as several veterans stood at attention nearby.
An additional 13 names of Americans who died during the country’s exit from Afghanistan in 2021 were also read.
Following two minutes of silence, bugler Dan Estep played “Taps.”
“It’s such a sense of community…to honor those who served,” said Karen Freeman, who lives on Franklin Street. “It makes you proud to be an American.”
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