Patriotic winners

The non-profit volunteer group that has held “the country’s largest parade on Memorial Day” for the last 80 years also sponsors an Art and Essay/Poetry Contest for school kids in grades K-8 from the Little Neck-Douglaston area.
This year, 266 budding artists and writers from a dozen local schools submitted entries, based on grade-appropriate themes. First, second and third place entries were selected for the nine grades, along with Grand Prize winners in art and writing.
On Friday, May 16, the Parade Organization held their awards night program at the Ernie Pyle Reserve Center at Fort Totten in Bayside. The grade winners received awards, including educational kits supplied by a Long Island company.
In addition, two Grand Prize winners, fourth-grader Daniel Kiernan from the Lakeville Elementary School and Deval Mehta, an eighth-grader at M.S. 67, received $1,000 savings bonds.
After the awards, presented by Senator Frank Padavan (to the right of Parade chair James Rodgers in back row) the kids and their families feasted on pizza, compliments of Giardino Ristorante in Douglaston.
Here is the winning class of 2008, which will be marching as a group in the parade on Monday, May 26 at 2 p.m. It starts at Jayson Avenue and Northern Boulevard in Great Neck and finishes in the Saint Anastasia schoolyard in Douglaston.
To see a full list of the winners and their entries, and for more information, visit www.MemorialDayParade.org.