Houston Cancels Veterans Day Parade Scheduled For Saturday

HOUSTON, TX — There will be no Veterans Day Parade in Houston this weekend, the city announced. An estimated 20,000 area veterans attend the parade annually of the 300,000-plus total veterans in the Greater Houston region. The reason? A 5k race.

A Veterans Day celebration and 9/11 Remembrance will take place at City Hall after the Travis Manion Foundation 9/11 Heroes Run, which was originally scheduled for September but rescheduled to the Saturday because of Hurricane Harvey.

"It's empowering," Air Force veteran Mike Poellnitz said on ABC 13. "It made you feel like what you were doing meant something. That it wasn't just something that drove me personally, but other people felt was worthwhile."

Officials say they could've done a better job at getting the word out rather than last minute, but claimed the parade will be back in 2018.

"It just became difficult to do a 5K run on the same streets where a parade would be held just a couple hours later," said Carl Salazar, Houston's director of veteran affairs.

Some question the city's inability to have a parade for the veterans, especially since more than 750,000 people flooded downtown for a parade honoring the Houston Astros World Series championship just last week.

"It doesn't bother me, the comparison," Marine Corps veteran Mark Perez said. "We are all veterans. We did all serve our country. We deserve what they deserve, but they definitely deserved what they deserved as well."

The city said there is no comparison between baseball and the vets.

"The two don't have anything to do with each other," Salazar said.

"We would've had a Veterans Day parade if we wouldn't have had Harvey, and it wouldn't have had anything to do with the Astros parade."

Veterans get it, but they hope to see their parade return in 2018.

"I understand the Astros," Poellnitz said. "Believe me, it was deserving, but don't forget about us."

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images