Skies remained mostly sunny Monday morning for Tamaqua’s Memorial Day Parade along Broad Street.

But due to a prediction of rain - which did happen - the 156th Tamaqua Memorial Day service was moved from the Soldiers’ Circle in Odd Fellows Cemetery to the Tamaqua Arts Center.

The indoor service was standing room only, with folks holding flags as speakers paid tribute to those who served, and those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Staff Sgt. Matthew Holmberg, a Tamaqua native and graduate of Tamaqua Area High School’s Class of 1992, was the featured speaker.

He spoke about service personnel being ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

“Ordinary men and women, many barely old enough to claim the title of adult, and some who never had the opportunity to cross that threshold, paused the lives that they knew and answered our country’s call to serve,” Holmberg said. “They left big cities and small towns, suburbs and farms, said goodbye to those that they loved and their life of comfort and ease, and embarked on a journey that was unknown.”

The “ordinary” men and women became soldiers, sailors, air men and Marines.

“Then they became extraordinary,” he said. “Without their selfless sacrifice, our nation, and the ideals we hold so dear would crumble and fall away forever.”

Holmberg said it’s important to remember that those who gave their service didn’t do so for partisan reasons. Rather, he said, they did it for the United States of America.

“We, the living, owe those who died a debt of gratitude we can never fully repay,” Holmberg said. “We can, however, choose to be kind, to extend grace to one another, to try and find some common ground to agree that we all must work together to keep this great experiment of democracy for all alive.”

He reminded attendees that service personnel aren’t the superheroes featured in movies.

“I served alongside them. They are me. They are your neighbor, they are the kid you see walking to school or working at the Burger King in town,” he said. “And then one day they answer the call and they go. Sadly some of them never come back. May we never forget them. They were ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

Eric Zizelmann, who served as master of ceremonies, said that the Tamaqua Area Raider Band typically performs after the guest speaker’s address. But with the service moved to the arts center, the large band was unable to attend as a whole.

“Fortunately our guest speaker isn’t just a tuba player, he’s also a vocalist,” Zizelmann said, noting that Holmberg enlisted as a musician in the United States Marine Corps and played euphonium in the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing Band, El Toro, California, and the III Marine Expeditionary Force Band in Okinawa, Japan, among other assignments.

To fill the selections that had been planned for the band, Holmberg revisited the microphone to sing.

The ceremony included the reading of the life of Cpl. John J. Conahan Jr., Tamaqua’s first Korean War casualty.

His niece, Carol Ann Schaeffer of Lehighton, led the audience in “The American Creed.”

Zizelmann noted that three war memorials in Tamaqua are written with the names of those who died during service.

“There is no memorial, however, dedicated to veterans who died after their military service concluded,” he said.

Years ago, he noted, Tamaqua began the practice of reading the names of recently deceased veterans at its Memorial Day services.

Zizelmann repeated that custom, reading the names of the 49 who passed away since Memorial Day 2024. Before he did so, he asked the audience to stand “as they once did for us.”

Programs distributed during the event included the names of Tamaqua’s 94 war dead, from the Civil War to the Vietnam War.

Jack Kulp served as grand marshal of the parade. He enlisted in U.S. Army in 1969 and is a Vietnam War era veteran of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, where he served as a forward observer for a battalion of 155 millimeter self-propelled, tracked howitzers.

Even though the services were moved, the color guard of the Tamaqua American Legion C.H. Berry Post #173 rendered honors at the memorial after the parade.

Also on hand were the Rev. Debra Forney, Poppy Queen Isabelle Swartz, Canton Allentown #39 Patriarch’s Militant and the Tamaqua International Order of Odd Fellows.