Late each May, students at the Hugh Cole School hold a Memorial Day ceremony and send four students to the town's services on the Town Common, scheduled for this morning, where they read the Gettysburg Address, "Freedom Isn't Free," and other Memorial Day standards.

For organizers, the most important part of the yearly school ceremony is instilling respect and patriotic pride, and letting students know that soldiers have fought for them and continue to protect them.

It's all thanks to the late Frances "Fran" Nunes, who passed away last May.

For decades, the Warren resident worked as a teacher's assistant at Hugh Cole and for nearly as long, oversaw the school's Memorial Day ceremony, which she founded. She passed away in early May of 2020, and the Covid-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of that year's ceremony and this year's as well. But the school is taking steps to honor Ms. Nunes and recognize the contributions she made to the town's youth.

Though a full-fledged school ceremony was not held this year, school officials recently commissioned a Bristol artist to paint a bench adjacent to the school's front garden in her honor. A plaque honoring Ms. Nunes was added to the backrest. 

Physical education teacher Tracy Earl, who worked with her for many years, believes the bench is a fitting honor for a woman who considered Hugh Cole a second home and its students, her extended family.

"She really wanted them to know about Memorial Day, and what it meant, because they always get the day off and kids in first grade and Kindergarten don't understand. So she basically said, 'There's people who keep us safe.'"

Early Memorial Day remembrances were limited to placing flags in the garden where her bench now sits.

"From there we had a ceremony, and then the little ceremony got very, very big. and then she had the whole school out here one time, 300 of us. It was everything to her that they knew just to honor someone on that day."

Ms. Nunes retired some years ago but even late in her life, "she would get excused from the nursing home to come down to Memorial Day," Ms. Earl said.

"She was always the first person there, and her favorite song was "Proud to be an American."