From generation to generation, the torch is passed

Al Benton, left, who served in Korea with the Air Force and was Monday's main speaker, exchanges greetings with Diane Drake and her dad, 94-year-old World War II veteran Carlton Sicard. (Harrison Thorp photo)

ROCHESTER - Midway, Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Iwo Jima.

They were all islands desperately defended by a retreating Japanese military from the beginning of 1943 to the end of the war.

And they were all hell.

On Okinawa alone, during 82 days of fighting, approximately 100,000 Japanese troops and 12,510 Americans were killed, and somewhere between 42,000 and 150,000 Okinawan civilians died as well. 

Army Pvt. Carlton Sicard lived it, lived through it and on Monday turned out with fellow veterans to celebrate a day of tribute and triumph for all those who served their country during a special Veterans Day ceremony at the Rochester Commons.

Sicard, 94, welled up with emotion when asked what made Veterans Day special to him.

“It’s important,” he said softly as his daughter, Diane Drake, steadied him with a hand.

Drake’s family is no stranger to the sacrifices and danger of military service. Her son, Garry Drake, 29, and a 2003 graduate of Spaulding High School, is currently in Eastern Afghanistan as an Army Specialist in artillery.

“He’s doing OK,” she said.

Both grandfather and grandson chose the Army and artillery.

Sicard, who was born in Dover, N.H., and lived most of his life in Rochester, joined the Army in 1940 with a one-year enlistment, but when war was declared after Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he stayed in for almost another four years.

Sicard was an anti-aircraft specialist and set up wiring to enable better targeting of enemy aircraft, his daughter said.

Sicard said when he was first deployed into the Pacific Theater, he wound up in Australia after which his company was dispatched to several island campaigns from 1941-45.

Sicard, a former postmaster, also helped build Roger Allen Park.