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The Tomah Veterans Association will hold its annual Memorial Day observances on Monday, and the public is invited and encouraged to attend.

The annual event will be held at Oak Grove Cemetery at 10 a.m. American Legion and City Council member Pete Peterson will be the Master of Ceremonies for the event. Following the invocation by Pastor Mark Benning of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, the Tomah High School band will play the National Anthem. Students Kasie Von Haden and Andrew Sanjari will recite Logan’s General Orders and the Gettysburg Address, and Chaplain Father Willis E. Everett of the Tomah VA Hospital will be the keynote speaker.

Along with a Tribute to America by the Tomah High School band, the observance will also include the laying of a wreath, a firing squad from the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1382, and taps will be played by Jerry Sullivan.

Preceding the event at Oak Grove Cemetery, an airplane will fly over and drop a wreath into Lake Tomah while a 21-gun salute is fired below. Peterson said that while the ceremony at the cemetery is well attended, attendance at the lake ceremony has fallen off in recent years. Peterson encourages the public to attend both ceremonies.

The American Legion and VFW will visit 12 other cemeteries for ceremonies on Monday. Nearly 1,000 American flags were placed at Oak Grove Cemetery on Monday. The flags will remain next to the graves of veterans until the second week in September.

“It is a nice tribute,” Peterson said of the Memorial Day observances. “In the eight years that I have attended it, we have always had nice weather. It is a good way to start off Memorial Day.”

Wilton American Legion Post 508 will make a series of cemetery stops beginning at 9 a.m. Monday with the Catholic and Hilltop cemeteries in Wilton. A wreath ceremony at the bridge on Highway 131 will follow. Post 508 will continue will visits to the Lutheran, South Ridge, Day and Dorset Valley cemeteries.