Memorial Day 2017

Water Ceremony on Memorial Day 2017

The Naval Water Ceremony--where our city honors Beacon servicemen who have perished at sea--has been a traditional part of Memorial Day services every year dating back to at least the 1920s. On Memorial Days past, crowds of veterans and parade goers would stop at one of Beacon's bridges over the Fishkill Creek (either the East Main Street Bridge or the Wolcott Avenue Bridge), and a prayer would be said and a wreath of flowers tossed into the creek in remembrance of those who served in the Navy and those who lost their lives for our country on the oceans of the world. No longer an integral part of the parade (and there wasn't even a parade this Memorial Day!), the Water Ceremony was held at 8 am, separate from the main services yesterday, and with less than a dozen veterans and onlookers to observe the wreath of honor tossed into the Fishkill Creek. This patriotic ceremony, like the Memorial Day parade itself, may soon pass into fading memory as holiday traditions wane and the number of our older veterans diminishes. So on this Memorial Day let us remember two sailors from Beacon lost on, and never recovered from, the high seas: Nicholas Calaluca and George Turiga ...

Nicholas Calaluca, a 19-year-old fireman on the USS Daly, was drowned in the icy waters of the Atlantic after being swept overboard when his ship went into a 65-degree roll after being hit by a 20-foot swell. The date was February 5, 1960, and the Daly, an old Destroyer with a storied past from World War II, was on its last voyage off the coast of Virginia, headed for the mothball fleet at Hampton Roads. Five other sailors from the ship perished with Calaluca in that tragic incident that day.

During World War II Captain George P. Turiga and the crew of the 1685-ton Army freighter "Nevada" had been battling a raging gale in the North Atlantic off of Greenland for five days when the Nevada began to take on water. With the ship listing badly, Captain Turiga gave the order to abandon ship on the 16th of December of 1943. Three lifeboats were lowered into the heavy seas and Turiga's boat, with 31 men on board, capsized. All were quickly lost in the icy waters.

... On Memorial Day, Beacon has honored its lost heroes with a wreath of flowers tossed into the eddies of the Fishkill Creek where it will float downstream and eventually join greater waters and far off shores.