FREEBORN — It’s going to be a grand celebration of the U.S. military on Armed Forces Day at Central Park in Freeborn.

“It started off to be a small thing, and it blossomed into something huge,” said organizer Gene Millang, a Freeborn resident and veteran of the Vietnam War.

There will be military equipment and memorabilia going back to the Civil War and the former veterans-advocacy organization Grand Army of the Republic, which comprises Civil War veterans, Millang said. And there will be items from the Spanish-American War up to the modern-day U.S. wars.

The tribute is called Celebrate Armed Forces Day at Freeborn Central Park, and it will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Armed Forces Day is May 19, a Saturday.

It is still being organized. Millang said he hopes to have a retired general from Mankato and a retired admiral from New Ulm as speakers. He has a bugler coming from St. James. There are members of 15 American Legion posts and four Veterans of Foreign Wars posts coming, so far, to present colors.

There will be live old-time country music, brats and hot dogs for sale, the collection of old flags and selling of new ones and collecting can tabs for returning veterans.

The proceeds from brats and hot dogs will go toward some Freeborn needs: new horseshoe pits, removing tree stumps and fuel costs for Meals on Wheels.

The Legion Auxiliary in Freeborn will sell poppies and the Freeborn Area Cancer Auction will sell flowers, too.

Millang plans to hang posters across the area in coming days.

 

Flower sales

In fact, organizers of the Freeborn Area Cancer Auction soon will make their annual trip to the Cedar Valley Produce Auction in Elma, Iowa, to buy flowers by the lot, enough to fill three enclosed trailers, said organizer Jeanette Ladle.

They will sell flowers at Central Park 6 to 8 p.m. May 18 and again during the Armed Forces Day celebration.

Ladle lost a 46-year-old cousin to cancer. She said she has a sister who survived and sisters-in-law who have not.

“We hope by doing this for research that we will be able to conquer some of these things down the road,” Ladle said.

The Freeborn Area Cancer Auction happens in November on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving Day. It raised $40,000 last year for the Eagles Cancer Telethon, which gives the funds for cancer research.

The flower sales, Ladle said, raise about $3,000. This will be the third year the Freeborn Area Cancer Auction has had flower sales.