By RICK MILLER
Olean Star
OLEAN — A large, respectful crowd attended the 2026 Olean Memorial Day ceremonies in Lincoln Park Monday.
Skies were cloudy, but the day was bright as the ceremony got underway at 11 a.m.
The Olean High School Band was on hand to perform the “National Anthem” and the Chorus sang “God Bless America.”
Master of ceremonies John Gordiner introduced the speakers, Mayor Amy B. Sherburne and Assemblyman Joe Sempolinski.
The 148th District assemblyman, said he was proud to be one of the speakers again at the Olean Memorial Day observance.
Sempolinski compared the Memorial Day ceremony with temperatures in the 60s, to a recent Veterans Day service he attended in Lincoln Park when it was snowing. “It was an amazing turnout,” he added. “And here on the first weekend of summer there is such a wonderful turnout. I’m so proud to represent Olean.”
“This is going to be quite a summer with the 250th anniversary of our country,” Sempolinski. July 4, he said, will be something to see.
“We honor those who have enabled us to be here,” Sempolinski said. “It is the price of freedom.”
In her first Memorial Day speech as Olean mayor, Sherburne said, “When we gather for Memorial Day, it’s easy to lose ourselves in an abstract concept: duty, sacrifice, freedom. But Memorial Day is not abstract. It is personal. It is measured not in monuments or ceremonies, but in empty chairs, folded flags, unfinished conversations, and the lives forever changed by loss. It doesn’t know what it’s like to watch the morning fog roll off Mount Hermann. It doesn’t know the sound of the Allegheny River in the spring or the quiet, stubborn strength it takes to build a life here in the Southern Tier.” She added: “History doesn’t feel the loss. Communities do.”
Sherburne continued: “Today, we honor those who never came home. We remember not only how they died, but how they lived, whom they loved, and the futures they gave up in service to something greater than themselves. The teens who sat in the booths at the local diners, who cheered under the Friday night lights, and who left the comfort of these Enchanted Mountains because a higher duty called.”
The mayor said, “What makes our community’s sacrifice different isn’t that our fallen were flawless giants. It’s that they were ordinary people from an extraordinary, tight knit place. This area and City is built on hard work, sweat and grit. When a young man or woman from the Olean area went off to war, whether it was to the muddy trenches of Europe, the humid jungles of Vietnam or the blinding deserts of the Middle East, they didn’t go alone. They carried a piece of Union St or State St, East to West. They carried prayers of our churches and synagogues, mosques and temples. They carried the hopes of families, the pride of neighbors, the laugh of friends, and the quiet faith of a community that would wait for them to come home.
”And when they didn’t come home, the wound didn’t just belong to a single household. It tore a hole in the fabric of our entire community. It was felt in the sudden, heavy silence at the local firehouse; it was felt in the neighborhood parks where they used to play, the diners where the locals meet to share the news of the day.”
Sherburne said, ”So today, let’s make a promise to break the mold of typical, comfortable remembrance. Let’s notlet their legacy become a museum piece that we only think about once a year when the flags are planted.
”Instead, let’s honor them by how we live our lives in the city and community they loved. Let’s honor them by being the kind of community they fought to protect, one that watches out for its neighbors, that stands resilient in the face of economic hardship and that never forgets the value of looking out for the person standing next to you.
”To the fallen of Olean, to the fallen soldiers of our community and to the families who have carried the heavy, unseen burden of their absence, we see you, we honor you, and we will keep your story alive in the heart of the Enchanted Mountains forever,” Sherburne said.
Olean American Legion Post 530 Commander Shaun App and Veterans of Foreign Wars Commander Terry Vaughn placed a memorial wreath in front of the monument honoring the city’s war dead.
The honor guard of members of the Olean American Legion and VFW posts gave a military salute, firing long rifles before the playing of “Taps” by Olean junior Lokesh Anumalasetty.
