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.
The human touch. Yes. Oh Heather, such a soulful posting. Memorial Day weekend is the anniversary of my sister's untimely death 58 years ago. I'm the last in our immediate family. ". . .soon there would be no one left who even remembered his name." A bow, Heather, a bow of immense gratitude.
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.
There's another writer (a novelist) I know who tells me we non-fiction authors have the superpower of bringing the dead back to life. I've discovered it's true. HCR's certainly done it here (and before).
Seems that it was on 60 Minutes that I saw an account of a composer who was killed in a concentration camp before he had a chance to make his mark. Somehow a family member who survived got access to some of his material and an effort was made to perform his works. My memory is not what it once was so no more details. It does seem possible that some lives can speak from the grave; With a little help from non-fiction authors, family, those with peripheral knowledge (like HCR). Genealogists are good at this, trying to give so much more than birth-death dates. But I hark back to “Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard” which laments all the lives and stories never remembered or played out. They are legion. A treasure when some are brought to light.
Nonprofessionals can try to do their part to bring the dead back to life. I recorded my father's WWII stories on two audio cassettes. And what stories he had to tell. Anyone who knows a veteran can do the same!
Dad wrote his life story including his WWII military service including Europe after the Battle of the Bulge with some of the stories, some funny, some intereting and or sure a reality check on the horrors of war. I entered it in Blurb with photos, a few of them from his service and made it into a hardback book which many of the family have their own copies. His lifelong disability was from what we now call PTSD. However he said during and at the end of his life, just shy of 102, that he and my mother had a wonderful life, as part of the Greatest Generation.
My husband was in WWII in the Pacific Theater. Today I will read his diary from his time and experience there. He often re-read his diary. He too felt like he had the most wonderful life and died peacefully at 87, 9 years ago.
There was an oral history project in which my dad participated in 2001, just before he died. His stories, and those of other WWII vets, was broadcast on the History Channel thereafter. He was with Patton’s Third Army, drafted into the Army the same month he graduated from high school. He always answered my questions when I asked but I did more research after he died. I knew his group had liberated a concentration camp, but only with research believe it was Mauthausen.
I know there was a project to video record such stories and vets were encouraged to come share. Many did, and often it was the first time they spoke about it. My memory isn't the same either, so I don't know where they are housed, but some day, I'd like to visit. It's quite a keepsake for not just family but all Americans.
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.
Me too. HCR captured and conveyed Beau and the unlived consequences of a person serving with honor and the ordinary of who is was. With so much senseless carnage in our lives now, remembering the names and stories of individuals who died to keep facism from our shores is a must. What always will cause me to seek and need to honor the lives of individuals is knowing the holes ripped in our social fabric and the consequences for us because of their sacrifice ... the children who may have been, the art or science they would have given, the love and passion a few of us might have experienced, the discovery made, the perfected waste disposal unit this plumber may have created, the smiles and the generations of equally honorable children, cousins, aunts, and teacher who may have been had they returned. HCR, you did good here. Our story is not merely lists and retelling of facts, dates, discoveries. It comes to life in a narrative, true to fact, of course, but woven such that we remember and put words to it so that we remember and retell it to each other, forever. It is for us, the responsibility, to both say their names and retell their stories if only so that we are better for having honored their influences on our lives. I feel a puddle coming on.
Oh me too! This last week of school here in Texas? I’m just raw! I broke out in tears at the vet’s office with my dog. I started feeling claustrophobic in the exam room with a sliding door. All I could think is there’s no way to brace this door closed in an emergency. It’s going to take more than a summer break to feel better! Hope you are feeling some calm! These times are rough on all of us!
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 .
Fran. There are few people today that remember or know anyone who could not find a dress for a special occasion. I think of my daughter and grandchildren and realize they are a world away from the simple life that lies just before on the timeline of our family and many other families.
I did not know it at the time, but miraculously a brand new dress appeared at my school that was exactly my size, just in time to wear at my confirmation (a religious ceremony). I "won" the dress by some contrived raffle. It was years later that I figured out that because my widowed mother did not have the funds to buy her daughter a dress, the school donated one.
I've read recently that one is only dead when no one alive remembers you. My folks are approaching that milestone; my generation is the last that knew my father; Mom's reach is a little larger because she was a teacher and my nephew and one niece knew her.
Looking at the wedding pictures from my daughter’s April wedding I thought oh my gosh I look just like my grandmother! My children never knew her, but if they know me they know a piece of her. I’m a teacher and in my parents senior high school yearbook half the teachers were related to us. Maybe they don’t know the past relatives but a piece of the genes passed on is definitely there! We just have to pass on the stories too.
“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.”
“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.
enormous thank you for this story.. you brought it to the fore from the back recesses of my mind and i will send it out around. as far as i can. Laura X ( http://Lauraxinstitute.org)
thank u muchly feel free to spread the link around, and i re read my post and fixed my typo! really moving story re Charleston.. thank you Heather !!Laura
How ever-grateful I am, not only to the esteemed professor, but for the contributions of her "army" of thoughtful and generous posters. Thank you, Guamanian. Will forward this to as many as I can today.
Heather wrote about this (or maybe it was in one of her chats). No matter as it bears repeating along with all the other history we should learn about - IMHO.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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,
Thank you, Jeri. Our stories, as HCR reminds us everyday about the importance of History, are what connect us. Here’s a link to a video of Heather's interview on Amanpour and Co about the tragic mass shooting. So many and here in USA too many forgotten. Heather Cox Richardson on Amanpour and Company
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)
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?
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. 🤗❤️
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
You never fail to find the human touch in your histories.
Nor its dignity and grace.
The human touch. Yes. Oh Heather, such a soulful posting. Memorial Day weekend is the anniversary of my sister's untimely death 58 years ago. I'm the last in our immediate family. ". . .soon there would be no one left who even remembered his name." A bow, Heather, a bow of immense gratitude.
And of my younger brother's untimely death two years ago. There are three of us older sisters remaining and then, another generation will be gone.
Yes. And inspire us to do/be better.
What an amazing blessing. I didn't read about it the first time so I'm glad you wrote about
Beau again.
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.
There's another writer (a novelist) I know who tells me we non-fiction authors have the superpower of bringing the dead back to life. I've discovered it's true. HCR's certainly done it here (and before).
Seems that it was on 60 Minutes that I saw an account of a composer who was killed in a concentration camp before he had a chance to make his mark. Somehow a family member who survived got access to some of his material and an effort was made to perform his works. My memory is not what it once was so no more details. It does seem possible that some lives can speak from the grave; With a little help from non-fiction authors, family, those with peripheral knowledge (like HCR). Genealogists are good at this, trying to give so much more than birth-death dates. But I hark back to “Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard” which laments all the lives and stories never remembered or played out. They are legion. A treasure when some are brought to light.
I remember something similar. I know that there was a group of women who did something very similar during Japanese internment.
The googles told me this about Jewish composers in concentration camps:
https://www.dw.com/en/jewish-composers-who-died-during-the-holocaust-but-whose-music-lives-on/g-43567006#:~:text=The%20youngest%20Jewish%20composer%20murdered,themes%20with%20modern%20composition%20techniques.
And this about the women. I was aware of this because a local choir (Soromundi: Lesbian Chorus of Eugene) did the arrangement mentioned by the Peninsula Women's Chorus: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-sep-24-ca-25828-story.html
Hi Ally, I've heard Soromundi sing! They're really good.
Yes, My dad often quoted Gray's exquisite lines to me, and I thought immediately of them:
"Full many a gem's purest rays serene, the dark unfathomed depths of ocean bare,
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air."
Nonprofessionals can try to do their part to bring the dead back to life. I recorded my father's WWII stories on two audio cassettes. And what stories he had to tell. Anyone who knows a veteran can do the same!
Dad wrote his life story including his WWII military service including Europe after the Battle of the Bulge with some of the stories, some funny, some intereting and or sure a reality check on the horrors of war. I entered it in Blurb with photos, a few of them from his service and made it into a hardback book which many of the family have their own copies. His lifelong disability was from what we now call PTSD. However he said during and at the end of his life, just shy of 102, that he and my mother had a wonderful life, as part of the Greatest Generation.
My husband was in WWII in the Pacific Theater. Today I will read his diary from his time and experience there. He often re-read his diary. He too felt like he had the most wonderful life and died peacefully at 87, 9 years ago.
There was an oral history project in which my dad participated in 2001, just before he died. His stories, and those of other WWII vets, was broadcast on the History Channel thereafter. He was with Patton’s Third Army, drafted into the Army the same month he graduated from high school. He always answered my questions when I asked but I did more research after he died. I knew his group had liberated a concentration camp, but only with research believe it was Mauthausen.
Thank you for sharing that. A true liberator
And should!
I know there was a project to video record such stories and vets were encouraged to come share. Many did, and often it was the first time they spoke about it. My memory isn't the same either, so I don't know where they are housed, but some day, I'd like to visit. It's quite a keepsake for not just family but all Americans.
👌🏼
Thank you for giving me a spark of hope during these dark days.
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.
Me too. Got up today groggy after dreaming of loved ones who died. Tears always at the ready, it seems.
Me too. HCR captured and conveyed Beau and the unlived consequences of a person serving with honor and the ordinary of who is was. With so much senseless carnage in our lives now, remembering the names and stories of individuals who died to keep facism from our shores is a must. What always will cause me to seek and need to honor the lives of individuals is knowing the holes ripped in our social fabric and the consequences for us because of their sacrifice ... the children who may have been, the art or science they would have given, the love and passion a few of us might have experienced, the discovery made, the perfected waste disposal unit this plumber may have created, the smiles and the generations of equally honorable children, cousins, aunts, and teacher who may have been had they returned. HCR, you did good here. Our story is not merely lists and retelling of facts, dates, discoveries. It comes to life in a narrative, true to fact, of course, but woven such that we remember and put words to it so that we remember and retell it to each other, forever. It is for us, the responsibility, to both say their names and retell their stories if only so that we are better for having honored their influences on our lives. I feel a puddle coming on.
Amen!
Oh me too! This last week of school here in Texas? I’m just raw! I broke out in tears at the vet’s office with my dog. I started feeling claustrophobic in the exam room with a sliding door. All I could think is there’s no way to brace this door closed in an emergency. It’s going to take more than a summer break to feel better! Hope you are feeling some calm! These times are rough on all of us!
Me too!! Absolutely!!
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 .
Fran. There are few people today that remember or know anyone who could not find a dress for a special occasion. I think of my daughter and grandchildren and realize they are a world away from the simple life that lies just before on the timeline of our family and many other families.
I did not know it at the time, but miraculously a brand new dress appeared at my school that was exactly my size, just in time to wear at my confirmation (a religious ceremony). I "won" the dress by some contrived raffle. It was years later that I figured out that because my widowed mother did not have the funds to buy her daughter a dress, the school donated one.
Morning, Lynell. That is a touching story. That is community.
Beautiful
Good morning Lynell. Thank you for sharing this. It's wonderful.
I've read recently that one is only dead when no one alive remembers you. My folks are approaching that milestone; my generation is the last that knew my father; Mom's reach is a little larger because she was a teacher and my nephew and one niece knew her.
Looking at the wedding pictures from my daughter’s April wedding I thought oh my gosh I look just like my grandmother! My children never knew her, but if they know me they know a piece of her. I’m a teacher and in my parents senior high school yearbook half the teachers were related to us. Maybe they don’t know the past relatives but a piece of the genes passed on is definitely there! We just have to pass on the stories too.
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/
Thank you for this accounting. History can be so meaningful hearing it for first time and wondering why it’s the first time.
A good holiday to all.
United! 🗽🇺🇸
Wondering why it’s the first time, indeed
enormous thank you for this story.. you brought it to the fore from the back recesses of my mind and i will send it out around. as far as i can. Laura X ( http://Lauraxinstitute.org)
Loma, thank you. Wish I had heard about this effort in my earlier years, but grateful for your post and link.
thank u muchly feel free to spread the link around, and i re read my post and fixed my typo! really moving story re Charleston.. thank you Heather !!Laura
How ever-grateful I am, not only to the esteemed professor, but for the contributions of her "army" of thoughtful and generous posters. Thank you, Guamanian. Will forward this to as many as I can today.
Never heard this, thank you
Heather wrote about this (or maybe it was in one of her chats). No matter as it bears repeating along with all the other history we should learn about - IMHO.
My summer break has just started. I hope I can get back into listening to the chats! It was a crazy busy year so I’ve missed a year’s worth.
Hey, Denise. Being retired makes it easier to find the time. I hope you can start up again soon!
Beautiful account, Guamanian. And I so appreciate your including strong sources. Evidence of a seasoned historian. Love it.
Thank you for sharing this. I didn't know. . . .
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.
The teacher.
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.
And from the vantage point of decades, we can see that they were, just like Beau, so very very young.
Absolutely. Thank you.
So many veterans in that same boat, my father and father-in-law amongst them.
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).
East Greenwich,RI. Memorial Day was sacred..
My parents met in the Navy, both WWII vets.
Fond memories of those fluffernutters.
Sounds like my small New England town' s ritual. Rockport, Massachusetts.
Lunenburg, MA
Whiting. IN
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.
So many lives never lived…
And for a war that was … don’t know the best word … a fraud?
That pretty much describes it.
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.
Gratitude to you and yours, Pat.
In honor of you, Pat, I'd be pleased to honor them.
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.
Wonderful tribute
Thank you, Jeri. Our stories, as HCR reminds us everyday about the importance of History, are what connect us. Here’s a link to a video of Heather's interview on Amanpour and Co about the tragic mass shooting. So many and here in USA too many forgotten. Heather Cox Richardson on Amanpour and Company
May 27, 2022
https://pbs.org/video/may-27-2022-pmor3d?source=social
America’s relationship with Guns
“We need to fix this…”
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)
Thank you, Alan, for telling this history of your family. Best to you.
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?
With action, not endurance. We must, myself included, move past our pain to envision and seek a better America.
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. 🤗❤️
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