Veterans honored with ceremony at McCambridge Park

For Joseph Nuñez, a 2009 graduate of John Burroughs High School in Burbank, his service as a dog handler with the Marine Corps ended earlier this year after a deployment to Afghanistan. Burbank resident Leslie Galloway last served in the Marines during World War II, including on Iwo Jima, one of the fiercest battles of the Pacific island-hopping campaign.

“You would never believe,” Galloway said, describing the austere beachhead in February 1945 as “nothing but black sand” with nowhere for Marines to take cover as they fired up at Japanese soldiers raining lead down upon them from above.

Then, Galloway said, the Marines saw a little United States flag go up on the fifth day of the 35-day battle, and their tears and celebrations began. But then the flag came down.

“We all thought something was wrong,” he said, but the first flag was brought down so the Marines could raise a second, larger flag — an event captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, which became one of the most iconic images of the war and is now immortalized in a bronze statue at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Galloway and Nuñez were just two of Burbank’s residents, young and old, honored Wednesday during a Veterans Day ceremony in front of the McCambridge Park War Memorial. An estimated 250 to 300 people attended the event, organized by the Burbank Veterans Committee.

Following two flyovers by the Condor Squadron, the ceremony featured performances by the Burbank Community Band, veterans committee member Pat Walmisley, who sang “God Bless America” as she has for more than 20 years, and members of the John Burroughs High School Powerhouse Choir .

U.S. Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), state Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Glendale) and state Sen. Carol Liu (D-La Cañada Flintridge) attended, as did Burbank City Council members and city staff.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Mark MacCarley, a Bellarmine-Jefferson High School graduate who grew up blocks from McCambridge Park, was the guest speaker. He expressed some concern that more residents were not in the audience, noting that if it was a car show or an appearance by a member of the Kardashian family, “we’d have thousands” at the event.

MacCarley said that those in attendance, mostly veterans and their families, were members of a brotherhood and sisterhood earned by sweat and often blood. They, and school teachers, civic leaders, as well as police and fire employees and others in similar service positions, had paid their obligation — “I call it a debt” — to society through such service.

In return, the community has a “moral lien,” he said, to provide a functioning Veterans Administration, affordable housing and recognition of veterans’ special skills “through the act of hiring them,” not just talking about hiring them.

Mayor Bob Frutos presented Nuñez with certificates and a banner bearing his name that had flown along Third Street during his time in the service under the city’s Military Service Recognition program. Nuñez was recently hired by the Burbank police force — “near and dear to my heart,” said Frutos, a former Los Angeles police officer.

“He is our hometown hero,” Frutos said. “He is now serving us, our community.”

Gatto encouraged residents to thank veterans and take time to speak to them about their service. Despite being the “family historian of sorts,” he said, he had put off having such a discussion with his own father until it was too late.

Their last conversation, about finding a good plumber, was on Veterans Day 2013 as Gatto hurried back to Sacramento after speaking at the Burbank ceremony, foregoing a traditional dinner with his father, he said. The next day, his father, Joseph, was shot to death in his Silver Lake home.

“Veterans Day has been very bittersweet since then — it just isn’t the same,” Mike Gatto said. “If I can impress anything on you today, it’s to not let Veterans Day be bittersweet for your family.”

The elder Gatto’s memories of his four years in the Army died with him, his son said, urging others not to let their loved ones’ stories go untold.

“Keeping their memories alive, comprehending their sacrifices, making sure that you understand the decisions they made and what it meant for our country, that is, in my book, one of the most important things that each and every one of us can do to honor our veterans,” Mike Gatto said.

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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @ChadGarland