Ludlow is inviting residents to show their respects by assembling along the funeral processional route.
Republican photo by Don Treeger -- A line of people wait Thursday outside Ludlow Funeral Home to pay respects to the family of fallen Marine Sgt. Joshua D. Desforges
LUDLOW — Several hundred people turned out Thursday afternoon and evening at Ludlow Funeral Home to pay their respects to Marine Sgt. Joshua Desforges, the town resident killed last week during combat in Afghanistan.
Calling hours were scheduled from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. but a line was already forming in the parking lot by 1:30 p.m.
For most of the afternoon, the line out the front door and into the parking lot seemed to hold steady at between 150 and 200 people.
Ludlow police worked traffic control out front on East Street and Newbury Street on the east side of the funeral home was blocked off to traffic.
Republican photo by Don Treeger -- An unidentified Marine and an unidentified woman console each other outside Ludlow Funeral Home during the wake of fallen Marine Sgt. Joshua D. Desforges“It’s sad,” said Jay Garabino, a childhood friend of Desforges, upon leaving the funeral home.
He said he grew up with Desforges and remembers him as a great guy who was friends with everyone.
“He was always smiling all the time,” he said. “He made people laugh all the time.”
Garabino said that from early on, he remembers Desforges wanting to join the Marine Corps.
“He wanted to be a Marine from the 5th grade. That was his life,” he said.
Desforges is the first town resident killed in action in more than 40 years since the Vietnam War.
The private funeral is planned for 11 a.m. Friday at Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee. The funeral procession will leave Ludlow Funeral Home at 10 a.m. and travel up East Street to Chapin Street to Fuller Street to the Chicopee base. Only invited guests of the family will be allowed on the base for the funeral ceremony.
Map of funeral procession route for Sgt. Joshua Desforges The town is inviting residents to show their respects by assembling along the funeral processional route. School in Ludlow has been closed for the day and residents are invited to park at Ludlow High School, Veterans Park Elementary School, Baird Middle School and Chapin Street School to participate.
The Ludlow High School band will play in front of Ludlow High School during the procession.
Sandy LaVariere of Ludlow, who said she was the aunt of Desforges’s best friend, said his death has been hard on everyone who knew him.
“It hurts bad,” she said.
She said her nephew and Desforges were always together when he was home, and now dealing with the loss is hard.
“It’s been difficult. It’s been hard for him,” she said.
Desforges, she said, “was a great, great guy. He was very, very well liked.”
Thomas Barbeau of Ludlow, who knew Desforges’s parents, said that like a lot of people in town, he was saddened by a death hitting so close to home.
Barbeau, an Iraqi War veteran, it is an unfortunate and tragic reality to war is that people who volunteer to serve their country sometimes do not come home.
“It is a loss,” he said.
The loss is not just felt by the immediate family but the entire community because people who volunteer to join the Armed Forces are among the most dedicated and civic minded people around, he said.
He said he lost one of his men in combat in 2003 and it is a difficult thing to get over.
| Friends and family pay their respects to fallen Marine Sgt. Joshua Desforges |