Smith: For once, vet will smile and wave at own parade

This makes 10 years that Vietnam-era military policeman Steve Kemmerle has shifted his own life to neutral while driving to make Petaluma’s Veterans Day parade all that it can be.

Each Nov. 11, he stations himself at Walnut Park and directs participants in the North Coast’s largest parade of the day, answers questions, solves crises, makes decisions and works wonders.

But when the parade steps off from alongside the park at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Kemmerle will be sitting in the early 1960s Lincoln Town Car that will be labeled entry No. 16.

He had no choice but to ride because the Board of Supervisors earlier this year declared him Sonoma County’s 2014 Veteran of the Year for his efforts to remind us all of “how our men and women set aside their civilian pursuits to serve their nation’s cause, defending freedom of mankind and preserving our American heritage.”

Kemmerle figures, “I’m only going to be gone 20 minutes or so.” The Lincoln’s driver will loop back to Walnut Park and the parade director will return to duty.

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SIMPLE AND SOLEMN, a ceremony will commence sharply at 11 a.m. on Tuesday at the Veterans Memorial Monument that was dedicated alongside Santa Rosa City Hall in 2008.

The monument, located close to the corner of Sonoma and Santa Rosa avenues, honors all who have performed military service and bears the names of the 448 Sonoma County residents who have died in uniform since the Philippine-American War in 1899.

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ALSO at 11 ON 11/11, Post 3919 of Veterans of Foreign Wars will begin serving a lunch to veterans at the Sebastopol Vets Memorial Building.

Speeches of gratitude will pair nicely with the complimentary sandwiches.

THE FOLLOWING DAY, Wednesday, veterans are invited to SRJC to talk about putting their stories to paper, engage with a panel of peace activists and learn about services available to vets enrolled at the JC.

Hosted by the Veterans Writing Group and Veterans for Peace, and involving the Peace & Justice Center, the free program begins at noon in Newman Auditorium.

THEY’RE JUST NAMES to most of the millions of people who snicker or guffaw at “Pearls Before Swine,” the out-there comic strip by Sonoma County’s Stephan Pastis.

But we felt right home with Friday’s strip, wherein a lazy guide dog fixated on the TV directs his blind master, keen to walk downtown, to go “right on College, left on Mendocino, right on Fourth.”

Few “Pearls” readers know that for years, Stephan sketched out new strips at a coffeehouse on Santa Rosa’s Fourth Street, a stone’s throw from Mendocino. It closed and he sought out caffeinated inspiration and quietude elsewhere.

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NO HELEN RUDEE: It stung a bit, didn’t it, to read how Deb Fudge dissed the 4th District following her loss to Jim Gore in the supervisorial race?

“Maybe this part of the county wasn’t ready for a female supervisor,” she said.

It’s long past time to play the gender card in regard to who the voters do and do not elect to the Board of Supervisors. Though not every district has yet elected a woman, the board has been gender integrated since Helen Rudee was elected in 1976 and was followed in short order by the late Helen Putnam, Janet Nicholas, Valerie Brown, Shirlee Zane and Susan Gorin.

For Fudge to suggest that gender-based backwardness by north county voters contributed to her defeat seems to point toward the true problem.

By the way, what’s the one other supervisorial district that hasn’t elected a woman to the board? The liberal, westerly 5th.

ONE ‘L’ OF A THING: No typographical errors are good for a newspaper, but one of the all-time worst occurs when the fourth letter is inadvertently dropped from the word “public.”

All the more unfortunate is that this typo occurred in the PD the day after the election in a caption below a photo of re-elected state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson.

The less said at this point, the better.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.