A flood of red, white and blue filled the streets of Downtown Fresno on Tuesday at the 106th Central Valley Veterans Day Parade.<\/p>\n
From local law enforcement to high school bands, groups from across the Valley came together to celebrate the brave men and women who have served in the armed forces.<\/p>\n
Community members, young and old, stood proud to celebrate those who gave of themselves to protect the safety of our country.<\/p>\n
“What veterans have been through isn’t easy, so it’s really good that we can come out here and honor them,” said Bella Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
Her grandfather served in the military.<\/p>\n
“Just to see the city come together like this means a lot, especially being a Californian and my dad is my hero,” said Sydney Hobbs.<\/p>\n
Hobbs was one of thousands who came out to watch from the sidewalk.<\/p>\n
Beside her sat the reason for her pride in the parade, her father, an air force veteran.<\/p>\n
“That’s my hero and that’s the person who has shown me what type of person to be in this world and how to accept anybody,” Hobbs said.<\/p>\n
Lining the streets were veterans donning hats and jackets commemorating their time in service, and plenty of them rode that wave of appreciation through the parade route as well.<\/p>\n
“It’s wonderful to see everyone out here to support and show the appreciation of the armed forces,” said 27-year Marine Corps veteran Mario Flores.<\/p>\n
Gilbert Mendez, a crew chief in the Vietnam War, was one of many veterans taking a well-deserved moment to appreciate their own sacrifice, saying, “I wanna cry, because it was hard. But I came back. That’s the main thing, I came back.”<\/p>\n
Event organizers made it clear that the planning for next year’s Veterans’ Day parade is already underway, and they can’t wait to do it all again for their local heroes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A flood of red, white and blue filled the streets of Downtown Fresno on Tuesday at the 106th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[31712,17774,112,114,113,11788,14659,31711,4825],"class_list":["post-48983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-bella-rodriguez","tag-downtown-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-local-law-enforcement","tag-mario-flores","tag-sydney-hobbs","tag-veterans-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}