KENT, Conn.—That most solemn of observations, Memorial Day, will follow its traditional pattern in Kent on Monday, May 26, when the Kent Center School Marching Band, Scouts, first responders and other civic groups take to the street to honor the nation’s fallen warriors.
The annual parade will kick off at 9:30 a.m., moving from Kent Center School to Elizabeth Street, along Route 341 to the Veterans Memorial next to Swift House, and then back to Main Street where it will proceed north to the Community House.
Along the way, the honor guard will fire salutes at St. Andrew’s Church cemetery, the veterans memorial, in front of Kent Memorial Library (built to honor World War I veterans) and at the Congregational Church cemetery.
The Air Force will provide a military jet fly over and the Kent Lions Club will provide ice cream at the Community House following the parade.
Traffic through the village center will be interrupted during the parade.
The Kent Land Trust invites townspeople to its field on Route 7 south of town for its annual community picnic from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. There will be plentiful food, live music, and displays by various civic groups.
This year, Conservation Commission member Wendy Murphy has offered to man a table with information that explains the benefits of composting organic waste.
The town is in its second year of promoting a food scrap composting project at the landfill and in 2023-24 collected 49,693 tons of food scraps that were processed by the Housatonic Resource Recovery Authority and returned as compost made available to homeowners.
Murphy hopes to include the latest weigh-in of food waste at the transfer station at closing Sunday, May 25, and to make a sign showing the reduction in waste service costs to Kent taxpayers.
