NASHUA – Michael Graziano was 5 when his mother got a phone call from former Nashua Police Chief Paul Tracy one sunny summer day in 1964.

It seemed like minutes later that the Graziano house on Brook Street was crawling with Nashua uniforms, lieutenants, captains, “all the bigwigs.” A female officer stayed with Graziano and his two younger sisters while his mother, Sylvia, went to the hospital.

It wasn’t until later that he learned that his father, Edward Graziano, a 26-year-old, three-year veteran of the Nahsua Police force, had died.

“I know it was a nice sunny day that day, you know?” Graziano said. “It’s a day I’ll never forget.”

Police from around the state gathered at the Statehouse in Concord on Friday to honor their fallen brothers during a ceremony capping Police Memorial Week. Graziano goes every year with his son, now 11, who’s named Edward after his grandfather. He brought his 5-year-old daughter, Martina, for the first time this year.

“I want my kids to know their grandfather, who he was and what he was for,” Graziano said. “I just want them to bring their kids and push me up there in a wheelchair when I’m too old. I don’t want them to forget.”

Edward Graziano is one of the four Nashua officers who have died in the line of duty, the first being James Roche, a patrolman who was gunned down by a burglary suspect on Sept. 23, 1928.

Roche pulled his service revolver on the suspect on the porch of 32 Temple St. and shot him twice. From the ground, the man shot Roche five times.

Roche died in the hospital 22 days later. He was 53, and had been a Nashua officer for four years, according to Nashua Police.

Almost 30 years later, officer Michael Latvis, a 38-year-old father of two, responded to a call for an injured woman and was killed in an accident when the police ambulance he was in was hit from behind at the intersection of West Pearl and Chestnut streets on Dec. 22, 1956.

The ambulance spun into a utility police, throwing Latvis from the vehicle, and fracturing his skull, according to Nashua Police.

Latvis’ son, also named Michael, a Stratham resident, was 16 when his father died. He took a cab home from a friend’s house after his aunt called to say his father had been in an accident. He remembers hearing confused news reports on the radio on the ride home.

“You could hear on the radio they were trying to sort it out because the news was spreading around Nashua at the time,” he said.

The younger Latvis didn’t see his father awake again. He was brought to Massachusetts General Hospital and died there the next day.

Latvis and his 95-year-old mother go to the ceremony in Concord every year.

“We’re honoring his memory,” he said. “Someone who gave his life to the city deserves to be remembered. I think it’s a very moving ceremony, not just for him, but for all those who sacrificed their lives in the line of duty.”

The last Nashua officer to die in the line of duty was Acting Chief Armand Roussel, on Oct. 15, 1971.

A man had taken a hostage on Gingras Drive and demanded to see the chief of police. Roussel was called at home and approached the suspect, who immediately pushed the hostage out of the way and shot Roussel, 50.

He died 12 days later after spending 18 years with the department, according to Nashua Police.

Roussel’s daughter, Louise Corrigan, now works in the department’s records division. She was 13 when her father died.

“He could arrest you and then walk out shaking hands,” Corrigan said. “He was definitely part of the guys, part of the men.”

Corrigan said her father had dropped her off at Holman Stadium for a football game the night he was shot. She heard someone at the game mention a police officer had been shot and found an officer nearby to ask what had happened. He brought her to the Police Department.

“I remember just looking at all these men and running,” Corrigan said. “There was lots of running. I just remember the utter chaos. They were just beside themselves.”

Later, her brother picked her up and they went to the hospital. For some reason, a nurse tossed her father’s shoes to her, Corrigan said.

“I just remember clutching them and seeing him rolled by,” she said.

Roussel was on his way to surgery, one that he survived, albeit paralyzed from the waist down. He died more than a week later, though, because of blood clots, Corrigan said.

Roussel was good friends with Latvis, Michael Latvis Jr. said. They used to work out together in a small gym on Lake Street, he said.

Joseph G. Cote can be reached at 594-6415 or jcote@nashuatelegraph.com.