2013 61st Old Soldiers Day Parade, Alpharetta, GA

• The Old Soldiers Day Celebration Spans The Years

   

• An Historical event is celebrated on the first Saturday of August in Alpharetta, Georgia, known as Old Soldiers Day.  This is sponsored by The American Legion, Department of Georgia, Post #201, Alpharetta.  Present day veterans are privileged to participate in and carry on the heritage established by old soldiers.

   

• Soon after guns were silenced in the War Between the States, Confederate soldiers living in and around old Milton County, now apart of Fulton County, established a time during each year when they could bivouac for several days to remember the fellowship founded during the tragic time when families became divided over different philosophies.  They came by horse back, horse and wagon, and on foot, meeting in a small town called Alpharetta.

   

• Many were bivouacking in Alpharetta when the young soldiers of World War I returned home.  Best evidence indicates that during 1920, an elderly Confederate soldier invited these "younguns" to assemble to the rear and parade with them down Alpharetta's main street.

   

• The days went swiftly by, and soon the old soldiers' physical capabilities lagged far behind their spirit and desire to continue the tradition.  In 1924, the reunion was abandoned.

   

• Twenty eight years later on a Sunday afternoon in June, 1952, a group of men who were vitally concerned with veterans and their loved ones, unanimously agreed that Old Soldiers Day should be more then a memory.  These gentlemen, themselves veterans, sounded the bugle that would again rededicate the first Saturday in August, as a living memorial to veterans of all wars.  This historical significance is why this day will always remain personal to all veterans.

  
  

  American Legion Post 201 

  * August 3, 2013 - The 61st annual Old Soldiers Day Parade.

   

  The 2013 Grand Marshall is Leon “Lee” Ellis, a Retired US Air Force Colonel and a former fighter pilot who endured 51/2 years as a Prisoner of War in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison near Hanoi. Today Colonel Ellis is a Fox News Military Analyst, Executive Coach and Corporate Consultant. He is the author of “Leading with Honor,” also the theme of the 61st Old Soldiers Day Parade.

  
  

  

   

  Artwork from “The Pledge” (incorporated into montage above)
  Courtesy of Artist Matt Hall and Valor Studios

   

   

  The artwork on the 2013 Old Soldiers Day T-shirt incorporates a collage of military scenes incorporated around the POW-MIA flag. The center-most figure is that of Mike Christian, also imprisoned by the North Vietnamese with cellmate John McCain and many other American Captives. A bombardier/navigator aboard a Navy A-6 Intruder, he too was shot down during a bombing mission on a strategic bridge near Haiphong.

   

  Christian, used bits of scrounged cloth which he dyed with ink and ground up red clay roof tile and a bamboo needle to sew an American Flag to the inside of his prison shirt. Each night the men in his cell would gather as Mike removed his shirt, hung it on the wall and they would recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

   

  One night the cell was searched, the flag discovered and Lt. Christian was taken away and beaten nearly to death by the guards. When he was returned to his cell, his eyes were swollen shut and his cellmates were concerned that he might not survive. In a few days, with more cloth and another needle he started sewing another flag.

   

  That is why his story of bravery, defiance and love of country is the central element of this year’s Old Soldiers Day t-shirt. God Bless America and its heroes.