“I’m tired,” said Morrison, 58. “It gets harder and harder every year.”
Her longtime boyfriend, Joe Snider, 62, added: “It works her to death.”
Planning parades is more work than it appears, she said. Morrison and Snider have been a one-two parade team for several years. They have tried to recruit volunteers, hold organizational meetings in their Middletown home, but the response has been as welcome as rain at a parade.
So they have relied on family, friends and co-workers. Usually, she said, six people organize the parades that are enjoyed by hundreds.
“You just can’t get any help,” Snider said, shaking his head. “There are people out there who want things changed, but they don’t want to help you change it.”
Thankfully Morrison isn’t stepping away completely from her community involvement. Chairman for the Middletown Cemetery Board, she will remain active with Memorial Day activities at the Middletown Cemetery with the Boy Scouts, and the Middletown Area Memorial Day Association.
Morrison’s devotion to the military was delivered from her late father, Kenneth Young, an Air Force veteran who died in May 2006. In 1999, he asked his daughter if she’d help with the parades.
She never hesitated.
“I can’t say no to veterans,” she said.
In the front yard of her home on Lewis Street, an American flag, a POW/MIA and Vietnam veteran ribbon share the flag pole. There is an etched stone with the phrase: “Freedom isn’t free” sitting in her flower garden. Patriotism is a way of life in her house, not something that’s trendy once or twice a year.
When asked where her respect for veterans was planted, she said: “It was taught.” There was no reason to ask the name of her teacher.
What does her father think of the way she has carried his torch?
“I hope he’s looking down and saying, ‘Good job,’” she said.
Then she got quiet.
“You going to make me cry,” she said, drying the tears with her T-shirt.
Snider looked over and tried to give Morrison time to collect her emotions.
“This is something she dearly loves,” he said. “But she’s tired.”
Next May, for the first time since 1999, Morrison will be watching from the parade route instead of being stuck back at Smith Park. She will one of those who line the parade route, watching the passing floats, waving to the dignitaries.
“It’s going to be different,” she said.
Now that she’s retiring, Morrison said she’s concerned about the future of the parades. She wants somebody to take over, either a community volunteer or a representative from the City of Middletown.
“We’ve always got people serving one way or another. They are still serving our country,” she said. “It must continue.”
Her dad wouldn’t want it any other way.
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