Gale Brewer’s Memorial Day Address 2025

May 26, 2025

I thank Peter Galasinao and Neil Berson of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Association as well as John Herrold of the Parks Department and Merritt Birnbaum of the Riverside Park Conservancy for, year after year, organizing this Memorial Day celebration at our beloved Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.

I also thank Margaret Braken, the Parks Department’s landscape architect for Riverside Park. As you might know, with the help of Mayor Adams, I was able to allocate $62.3 million to restore this monument in FY24. It is a complicated project, but the design will be completed in 2026; (drones were all over it in 2025 to identify the leaks and missing stone); the bids for construction will be announced in 2026; and the restoration will be completed in 18 months, which is at the end of 2027 or early 2028. I hope we can wander into the heart of the monument on Memorial Day 2028!

We all owe thanks to Dr. George Chall, who is the founder of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Association and who revived this Memorial Day service, and who was here last year with his wife Vickie and spoke to us.

He is 102 ½ years old and a WWII vet, still going strong but now living in North Carolina. He and his wife just sold their house, built a new one, and were recently meeting in Washington, DC with Elizabeth Dole and her foundation, which supports military families. I have photos to prove his travels!

I welcome you and everyone from the Navy and Marines who are here as part of Fleet Week to our Upper West Side Memorial Day celebration!

My father and grandfather served in the World Wars, and my husband, Cal Snyder, who is here today, served in the Marines in Vietnam. Those who are disabled in body or mind, or however aggrieved over what befell them, display more courage every day than some of our leaders who scorn them, though they may never have served.

Here we come to our responsibility, which today includes the courage to embrace and speak on behalf of those in uniform, and those who every day pay the price for having worn it, and this includes the courage to insist that Memorial Day is no play thing of political opportunists but remains, for those with a true heart, to gather as we have today, to stand with those in uniform regardless of race, creed, color or gender.

We are here today because we honor and respect you; our love of this country and respect for those like you will not be tarnished by wrongful deeds and ugly words.

249 years after we fired “the shot heard ‘round the world,’” and one year before we celebrate our semiquincentennial, our bookshelves are filled with manuscripts explaining it all, and of speeches we have a plenty, and the headstones of our dead stretch to the horizon. Each mark one given life to be remembered every day. But on this day, at services around the world, we say all of their names.

New Yorkers have gathered on Memorial Day for nearly 125 years. Back then, Jim Crow slavery was alive and well, and aging veterans of the Civil War stood beside us to salute their deeds, much as the last of the veterans of WWII do today.

The Spanish-American War was fresh in memory, the World Wars were yet to come, the Great Depression, the Red Scares, the Black Lists of the McCarthy years, Korea and the Vietnam era, 9/11, and the wars fought in its name, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Through it all and much more we the people of New York have served and stood here in honor and respect of those in uniform. But not just that: then and now, we have honored the ideals of a free people for which so many before us sacrificed their lives.

To each of you who serve in uniform today, I want you to know that this ceremony is not only to honor the dead; we are here to say how much we honor and believe in you.

Thank you.

Let’s go Knicks! Knicks in six!