542 Comments

You never fail to find the human touch in your histories.

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What an amazing blessing. I didn't read about it the first time so I'm glad you wrote about

Beau again.

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So many decades after death, Beau lives on in memories of strangers thanks to your writing. I see him presenting the dress and people visiting his gravesite as signs of the goodness that’s still everywhere but lost amid so much darkness.

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My emotions are raw these days. I so appreciate your writing. Too often I'm moved to tears. My wife and I think you are wonderful. You are a precious gift. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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Thank you for sharing. One of my fears is that as time passes there will be fewer and fewer people who will remember those on whose shoulders we stand. This is a beautiful blessing and I am glad that people continue to visit his grave .

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Heather writes

“While there is a lot going on in the country and the world today, it seems as important as ever to honor Memorial Day, the day we have honored since 1868, when we mourn those military personnel who have died in the service of the country—that is, for the rest of us.”

But, "[o]ne of the earliest commemorations was organized by recently freed African Americans...." (https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-memorial-day)

“South Carolina, where the war had begun in April, 1861, lay in ruin by the spring of 1865. The city was largely abandoned by white residents by late February. Among the first troops to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the Twenty First U. S. Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the formal surrender of the city.

“Thousands of black Charlestonians, most former slaves, remained in the city and conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war. The largest of these events, and unknown until some extraordinary luck in my recent research, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters’ horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some twenty-eight black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

“Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders’ race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy’s horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”

“At 9 a.m. on May 1, the procession stepped off led by three thousand black schoolchildren carrying arm loads of roses and singing “John Brown’s Body.” The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens. As many as possible gathering in the cemetery enclosure; a childrens’ choir sang “We’ll Rally around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and several spirituals before several black ministers read from scripture. No record survives of which biblical passages rung out in the warm spring air, but the spirit of Leviticus 25 was surely present at those burial rites: “for it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you. . . . in the year of this jubilee he shall return every man unto his own possession.”

“Following the solemn dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: they enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches, and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantry participating was the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite. The war was over, and Decoration Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration.

“The war, they had boldly announced, had been all about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders’ republic, and not about state rights, defense of home, nor merely soldiers’ valor and sacrifice." (https://www.pbs.org/national-memorial-day-concert/memorial-day/history/)

See, also:

• Forgetting Why We Remember

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/opinion/30blight.html

• The Unofficial History of Memorial Day

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/opinion/30blight.html

• Charleston claims first Memorial Day celebration with African Americans playing significant role

https://www.live5news.com/2020/02/18/charleston-claims-first-memorial-day-celebrationwith-african-americans-playing-significant-role/

• Black Americans Were Nearly Erased From Memorial Day's History

https://www.lx.com/black-legacy/dont-overlook-memorial-days-black-southern-roots/53453/

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I love how you take a seemingly minor side note and turn it into an important moment for all to savor. I did. Thank you as always.

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Loving story about a young American hero. Memorial Day is somewhat bittersweet as my dad was a WWII Army veteran who had spent his years in the Pacific Theater. Then there’s my husband, who is a Vietnam vet who has a tremendous dislike for the government and the VA. What most people do is have get togethers, barbecue, drink alcohol, etc. The meaning of Memorial Day alludes them. So many heroes fought and died in so many senseless battles. I will remember your friend’s uncle with fondness.

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Thank you Heather for another nudge to rekindle some forgotten traditions from my own past Memorial Days. I will begin tomorrow picking a few flowers from the back yard & bring them to a local cemetery and make peace with my heart through a very long ago practice.

In my small New England town we walked to the cemetery about a mile or so from the center and sang America the Beautiful at the WWI and WWII grave sites. We left flowers at each grave and waited until the uniformed honor guard blew taps and another soldier shot into the sky above the graves.

This is the only time in the year that I am conscious of silence…an awe for the peaceful procession with children and teenagers and adults walking down the main road going out and coming back to town, in respect for our brave men & women ( there were women from our town in both of those wars — something fantastical to me as a child).

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I think the same thoughts about my best friend Thaddeus Williams, who died in Vietnam. I knew his very fine girlfriend, whom I met only once before Thad and I shipped out. I have not only regretted his death, but also the life he never lived, and the wife and children he never had. And the emptiness left by his loss.

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May 30, 2022·edited May 30, 2022

Beautiful. I honor my dad’s brother Jim, who died at Normandy. I honor my uncle Ralph who died in Italy. I honor my mother’s brother Stephen who served in the Navy in WWII, in Korea during the Korean War and was wounded in battle on a Navy river boat in Viet Nam. I honor my brother Tom for his service in Army and my brother Scott for his service in the Marine Corp. I honor my father Paul for his service in the Navy on a destroyer in the South Pacific during WWII. And I honor my girlfriend and neighbor who at 95 or six was an Army nurse in WWII, Birdie. And I honor my son Neil who served in the Air Force. It was our honor to serve.

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May 30, 2022·edited May 30, 2022

Thank you Heather for remembering and reminding us of the sacrifices our fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers made for us. To fight for the possibility of world peace. Against fascism and tyranny. My parents were married in 1939 and my father joined the army in 1941, stationed in Sicily and North Africa. My American father in law married my mother in law, an English woman and he left to fight, while she gave birth to their son, during a blitz in Walthamstow, London. The apartment next door was flattened during the bombing. I wrote this poem for my children with photographs of their grandfathers in uniform each standing with the kids’ grandmothers, taken during a leave. All of our family stories and the ones you shared are our memories that make up Memorial Day. We are grateful they came home; so many didn’t, but the war changed each of them forever. And changed our world.

AFFIRMATIONS Irene Lipshin

Yes’ Marcia said Yes to Phil and you are here because of the affirmative.

Yes, Joan said Yes to Bud

and you are here because of their agreement.

Each proclaimed love to one another.

Life was speeding out of control,

Hitler threatened your descendants,

Pearl Harbor’s tide lapped against tomorrow

Love the only constant, the only guarantee

against losing all— silk stockings, sugar, butter.

They married for something visceral, not money, but the softness of a caress,

the certainty of a kiss,

made babies, pried themselves

from their mothers’ shoulds and oughts

And pledged ‘til death do us part.

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Dear Heather, I was so touched by your story about Beau and it rang true to my family. My uncle, Lt. Jesse Rogers, was my dad’s younger brother. He so wanted to fly in the late 30’s but he was rejected from the Army Air Corps for being color blind. So he went to Canada and joined the RCAF. Then due to Pearl Harbor the US Army Air Corps would take anyone so he transferred to the Army Air Corps. He deployed to England as a B-17 aircraft commander in June 1943 and in August 1943 he and his crew were killed. He is buried in Cambridge and I have had the privilege to visit his grave. Thank you for this story and all your stories. Alan V. Rogers, Major General, USAF (Ret)

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Your thoughts about what legacies are lost with untimely deaths makes Uvalde even more tragic for me. It’s so true. When will this mania for guns end? How many more need to die before leaving any legacy?

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Beautiful. I hope I’ll be able to visit one day. Today I honor my father and 3 uncles who were lucky enough to come home but made sure I never forgot. 🤗❤️

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Great reminder of what we stopped and need to stop again. Not sure anyone today is willing to sacrifice anything much less their life to do it. Certainly no senator

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