At a parade field in Italy, one Army family’s legacy comes full circle

VICENZA, Italy — Soldiers here call it Hoekstra Field, or sometimes just Hoekstra, after a decorated World War II veteran who died of a blood disease while serving as sergeant major at the U.S. Army’s Southern European Task Force in the 1960s.

It’s Caserma Ederle’s parade field, where soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade hugged their spouses and children after returning from grueling Afghanistan deployments. Countless commanders have passed the guidon at changes of command held here at a regular rhythm not unlike a heartbeat.

Already this month, it’s hosted both a 9/11 commemorative run and a USO dog show. And on Tuesday, it saw the return of Daniel Hoekstra, the son of its namesake, who had not seen it since being whisked away to Michigan as a young boy in the days after his father’s untimely death.

“I came a long way to get here,” Hoekstra said, standing beside the field at a small monument to his father, a soldier who landed on Omaha Beach as an Army private in 1944 and fought the Nazis in the meat grinder of the Battle of Huertgen Forest.

It’s no small thing to name a parade field after a person, and Hoekstra said he knows his father was well-regarded in the Army.

Daniel Hoekstra and his wife discuss his father, Sgt. Maj. Melvin E. Hoekstra, during a visit Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026, to the parade field on Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy, which was dedicated in honor of the decorated World War II veteran just months after his 1966 death while serving as sergeant major of the U.S. Army’s Southern European Task Force. (Chad Garland/Stars and Stripes)

A parade field is an important part of an Army post, said Command Sgt. Maj. Jeffrey Paluso, the senior enlisted soldier at U.S. Army Garrison Italy, which is headquartered at Caserma Ederle.

“The meaning of the parade field really is history and lineage, standards and discipline, drill and ceremony,” Paluso said, describing those matters as being at the core of the soldier’s experience. “So, our parade field really, it’s the heart of the community.”

It holds special meaning for Hoekstra, who as a boy used to love watching military helicopters land on the field to pick up the man for whom it is now named, Sgt. Maj. Melvin E. Hoekstra, to take him on inspections of Army defenses in Italy, he said.

The elder Hoekstra had served with the 28th Infantry Division during the invasion of France and was later wounded in Germany’s Huertgen Forest near Belgium, during the battle that began in September 1944, earning a Bronze Star with Valor and Purple Heart.

His wounds required him to spend 18 months recuperating at the Army’s Gardner General Hospital in Chicago, Ill., one of several military hospitals where he would also go on to serve as a first sergeant, according to a brief Army biography.

In fatherhood, his parenting style was that of a senior Army noncommissioned officer, putting his children’s rooms to white-glove inspections each Saturday and expecting their beds to be made tightly enough to bounce a quarter off them, his son said.

He served as a sergeant major at the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., before getting orders to SETAF in Vicenza in July 1965, where he served until his death. SETAF had been established just a decade earlier.

After he died, his wife and children had three days to pack their bags and return to Grand Rapids, Mich., Daniel Hoekstra said. The younger Hoekstra became known as “the Italian kid” when he started classes there that year, he said.

Before they left, they had attended a funeral service in the post chapel, he said, but they were not brought back when SETAF dedicated the parade field in his father’s name a few months later.

After they left, the Army had their home packed up as it had been left, “including cigarette butts in the ashtrays,” he told Paluso during the visit to the parade field.

U.S. Army Garrison Italy Command Sgt. Maj. Jeffrey Paluso presents a set of framed mementos to Daniel Hoekstra at Hoekstra Field, a parade field named for Hoekstra’s father and the former sergeant major of the U.S. Army’s Southern European Task Force, during a visit to Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (Chad Garland/Stars and Stripes)

The garrison’s top NCO assured Hoekstra the Army had improved its support for families since those days.

“The Army does a much better job now,” he said. “Thank goodness we got better.”

As a father of soldiers who followed in their grandfather’s footsteps, Daniel Hoekstra said he’s seen the changes himself.

The younger Hoekstra, who served in the Navy as a signalman on the USS Pawcatuck in the late 1970s and retired from General Motors after a 33-year career in 2009, has spoken about returning to Vicenza for years, said his wife, Lin Hoekstra.

For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he felt it was time when he turned 70, and she encouraged him to go. He felt the trip would bring things full circle, he said.

Some things have not changed in the decades he was away — the chapel where he attended his father’s funeral still stands beside the gate, for example, though now it’s a back entrance instead of the main entrance as it was in his day.

During his visit, base officials also took him, his wife and a couple of their friends to view his old neighborhood, now the site of an ongoing construction project building hundreds of military housing units at Villaggio della Pace, minutes from Caserma Ederle.

When the Hoekstras called the area home, they could look out across the backyard and watch a neighboring farmer’s wife catch and kill the Sunday chicken, Daniel Hoekstra recalled during an interview ahead of his visit to the $500 million project’s site.

Many in his family have continued his father’s legacy of service, including several who made it to the parade field ahead of him.

One of Melvin Hoekstra’s six grandchildren who served in the military, 1st Sgt. Marc Krugh, conducted his final reenlistment ceremony on the field in 2018, the Army said in a statement at the time.

“This experience has been one of the more humbling moments in my career and my life,” Krugh said at the time.

During Daniel Hoekstra’s visit to Hoekstra Field, Paluso presented him with framed mementos, including a photo of the base as it was in the 1960s.

“You have no idea how much this means to me,” Daniel Hoekstra said.