Memorial Day parades are set for Monday, May 25, in Freeport and Durham and, as usual, the South Freeport Congregational Church gets a head start on the holiday.

The church, with the help of the Freeport Flag Ladies, will hold its special Memorial Day veterans service on Sunday, May 24, at 9:30 a.m. The Rev. Dave Bowling will deliver a special sermon. The Freeport Flag Ladies – JoAnn Miller, Elaine Greene and Carmen Footer – will light candles, ring the bell and pass the offering.

“It’s a nice, patriotic service,” Footer said. “They do a good job.”

Greene said that occasions such as the one at the South Freeport Congregational Church serve a unifying purpose.

“It’s just to get people connected to their country,” Greene said. “It’s not to tell them what to think. It’s to get them thinking.”

Following the service, church deacons will host a coffee hour.

Memorial Day events on Monday in Freeport get started at 9:30 a.m., with the parade through town beginning at Freeport High School and ending at the Town Park next to the Hilton Garden Inn. Gloria DeGrandpre, who coordinates the parade, said that bands from Freeport High School, Freeport Middle School and Mast Landing School, as well as the Greater Freeport Community Chorus, will provide the parade music. J. Arthur Stowell American Legion Post will have a float. There will be police cruisers, fire trucks, Scouts, Little Leaguers and all the things that make a Memorial Day parade.

“I grew up with this parade in Freeport, my daughters grew up with this parade in Freeport and it just carries on the Memorial Day tradition,” DeGrandpre said. “It’s a nice parade the way it always was, with the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts and the Little Leaguers, all in uniform.”

At the Town Park Civil War Monument, the American Legion Auxiliary will do the laying of the flowers.

“That’s how Memorial Day started, with the Civil War, and a lot of people don’t know that,” DeGrandpre said.

State Rep. Sara Gideon, D-Freeport, and Melanie Sachs, Town Council chairwoman, will be speakers at the Town Park ceremony.

In nearby Durham, there’s lots going on on Memorial Day. A 5K race and fun run will precede the 10 a.m. parade. Registration for the fun run is at 7 a.m., at the AMVETS Post 13 Hall at 1049 Royalsborough Road, with proceeds going to the AMVETS Post. The event starts out from the hall at 8. Participants will go up the road to Route 9, then to Patriot Way and back to AMVETS.

The Durham Community School band will provide patriotic music for the parade, beginning at 9 a.m. with the ringing of the Paul Revere Bell at the Old Union Church, which also is hosting a holiday event. The parade starts at the Durham Get & Go and proceeds about 11?2 miles to the back entrance of the school. There will be fire trucks, a fire department color guard, antique vehicles, an Air Force National Guard unit and a Walmart float.

Joseph Howe, chairman of the Memorial Day Parade Committee, hopes for a good turnout of spectators, as well as veterans.

“It would be nice to see more veterans, and it would be nice to get a few more people out,” Howe said.

Following the parade, the Durham Parents Teachers Association will hold a Family Fun Fair to raise funds for a sixth-grade conservation camp trip.

From 9 a.m.-noon, the Durham Historical Society at the Old Union Church will have a special open house to coincide with the Memorial Day parade and the Family Fun Fair. The historical society also will have a bake sale, and, as always, will take donations of food items to sell. People can drop them off the day of the open house at the church.

The Freeport Flag Ladies will be out and about on the actual date of Memorial Day, which is Saturday, May 30. At the invitation of the 20th Maine Volunteers, they will take part in a Civil War re-enactment event in Gray.

“They want to celebrate Memorial Day on the 30th because that’s the day it’s supposed to be,” Greene said.

On May 25, the Flag Ladies will march in the annual Brunswick-Topsham Memorial Day Parade, which begins in downtown Topsham.