HOLLAND — Diana Van Kolken recalls watching her father, John Noe, march in the Holland Memorial Day parade after their family moved from Coopersville in the early 1960s.
“We always went,” she said.
“We would usually watch from 16th Street.”
Noe, who served as principal at the former E.E. Fell Junior High School on River Avenue, was wounded in the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. He was awarded a Purple Heart.
As Van Kolken watched the parade year after year, she had this question: Why didn’t it go down Eighth Street, through the center of Holland’s downtown, like the Tulip Time Festival parades?
The 64-year-old owner of the Shaker Messenger doesn’t have to ask that question anymore.
Partly because of her persistence, on Monday the city’s Memorial Day parade will step off on Eighth Street for the first time in nearly 60 years.
American flags will line the downtown route as veterans head east on Eighth to Columbia Avenue, then south on Columbia to 16th Street, then east to Pilgrim Home Cemetery.
“We wanted to bring it back to the heart of the community, which is downtown,” Van Kolken said.
More than a year ago, Van Kolken and Judie Zylman, the former executive director of Hospice of Holland, approached the Holland Area Veterans Council with the idea of moving the start of the parade to Eighth Street.
For years, the parade had started at Centennial Park, just a few blocks south of Eighth, and ended at Pilgrim Home.
The veterans’ council agreed to the change.
Van Kolken then convinced city and police officials to approve the change.
For Zylman, the Memorial Day parade will have special meaning.
A year ago today, her nephew, U.S. Army Pfc. Casey Zylman of Coleman, was killed near Tallafar, Iraq, where a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle.

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