Veterans, New Yorkers, and even anti-war protesters won praise from Mayor Bloomberg during speeches and appearances at Memorial Day events across the city yesterday.

The mayor laid a wreath at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument on the Upper West Side in the morning and noted that the day held a “special sadness,” as 11 New Yorkers died during military service in the last year.

“These brave soldiers and so many others will be lovingly remembered and deeply missed by family and friends,” he said. “Today their losses echo throughout our entire city.”

A small group of protesters shouted anti-war slogans during the event, but Mr. Bloomberg said later that they did not bother him.

“I think it’s wonderful that they protest,” he told reporters at a Memorial Day parade in Queens. “I don’t necessarily agree with them, but it would be a shame to have this freedom to express yourself and to try to influence government and then to be too lazy to use it.”

Mr. Bloomberg said New York was “more patriotic today than it was 10, 20 years ago.”

“If you go back to the Vietnam days when I first came to New York, there was an anti-Americanism among ourselves which I always found strange given the right to protest was paid for in blood,” he said.

Hundreds of veterans and active-duty soldiers were on hand for the memorials, parades, and parties throughout the day. The speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, marched in the Little Neck-Douglaston Memorial Day Parade with her father, Lawrence Quinn, a Navy veteran who served in the Pacific during World War II. State Senator Frank Padavan, a retired Army colonel, marched as well.

At Whitestone, a World War II veteran, Chester Gusick, 82, choked back tears while describing his experiences in the Army, which included liberating a concentration camp. “I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that I don’t think of them,” he said of his fallen comrades. Mr. Gusick said he volunteers at a VA facility in Queens, St. Albans, helping injured veterans.

A veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, Specialist Robert Lohnes, 36, said the older and younger veterans relate to each other easily despite their age differences. “It’s a close-knit family,” he said.