Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford, has been named Grand Marshal of the 2010 Connecticut Veterans Parade, and Abraham Homar of West Hartford has been named a parade marshal. The eleventh annual event will step off on Sunday, Nov. 7 in Hartford at 1 p.m. near the Connecticut state Capitol. The largest veterans parade in New England, this year the Veterans Day National Committee in Washington, D.C. has recognized the parade as one of only 53 official “2010 Veterans Day Regional Sites.” It is the only Connecticut recipient of this national honor.

A U.S. Air Force veteran, Walter Harrison is the first university leader to be named top marshal of the parade. He joined the U.S. Air Force after completing the ROTC program at Trinity College in 1968. He first was stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss. During these years, he also served as a death notification officer, responsible for notifying families in Georgia and South Carolina that their sons or husbands had been killed in Vietnam or elsewhere. In 1972, he was stationed at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento, Calif.
“Serving as an officer in the U.S. Air Force was not only an honor; it was the best leadership training I have ever received,” says Harrison. “I consider it a high honor to have served my country, and I am humbled to have been asked to be the Parade Grand Marshal of the Connecticut Veterans Parade. This is a way of expressing my pride and gratitude to those who did so much more, especially to those who have been wounded or who died in service to our country and freedom around the world.”
Abraham S. Homar of West Hartford, a U.S. Air Force veteran whose plane was shot down over Germany during World War II, is the chaplain of Connecticut’s ex-POWs. He still works full-time as a liquor and wine salesman.
Watch for a story about Abraham Homar in the Ledger’s Veterans Day issue of Nov. 5.