Memorial Day … unofficially, it marks the beginning of summer.
Time to pull out the grill, take the covers off the patio furniture
and count the number of days until the kids are out of school.
Memorial Day … unofficially, it marks the beginning of summer. Time to pull out the grill, take the covers off the patio furniture and count the number of days until the kids are out of school.
Lost in the festivities sometimes are the roots – the reason – of the Memorial Day holiday. Lately, for me, Memorial Day has re-morphed into the holiday I remember when I was a kid. Maybe that’s a symptom of getting older. Whatever the cause, Memorial Day draws me back in time to when I was little.
It was known as “Decoration Day” in those bygone years. We honored the men and women who died in service to our country by gathering along Main Street to view the annual parade. The Honor Guard marched with Old Glory leading the way. The precision of their steps, the tidiness of their uniforms and the shine on their boots revealed a glimpse of the pride these men of the military felt in answering their call. And we, in turn, felt pride in them.
Afterward, we visited the cemetery and placed flags on the graves of friends and family we’d known who had been in the military. They were numerous. Most families’ sons joined the service; it was an honor to have a relative in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard or the Marines.
We began preparations for Memorial Day in school. By early spring we’d learned all of the military anthems in our music class (yes – back in
the day we actually had music classes).
Singing those exuberant songs while our music teacher banged out the chords on the old upright piano gave me chills. Our young voices resounded throughout the halls, and I wondered if the men and women of the armed forces were able to sing those songs every single day. I could think of nothing better and wished we could go on singing them forever.
The military seems to run in families. My dad passed down to me stories of my great-grandfather, Theodore Hoover, who fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. Theodore joined the 39th Regiment, Company I of the Illinois volunteers. He was 18 years, 9 months old.
My dad copied down accounts he found in history books about the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff where my great-grandfather was wounded, causing him to lose the use of one arm, and where it was reported 41 men lost their lives.
My father, too, was a veteran. Joining what was then the Army Air Corps, he flew in World War II fighter aircraft where he engaged in aerial combat. A gentle, peace-loving man, my dad must have had an extremely difficult time with this assignment, but he did what he was ordered to do.
He never spoke to us of this time of his life beyond the very basics. I do know he lost most of the hearing in one ear as a result of these missions and was later re-assigned as a gunnery instructor stationed in the U.S.
Although he never had to fly aboard a plane again during the war, he never lost his fascination for airplanes. Before the new cockpit restrictions post-9/11, he enjoyed stopping for a chat with the pilots whenever he exited a commercial aircraft.
During his training to become a gunnery instructor, my dad was sent to take classes at a college near where he was eventually stationed in Colorado. It was there that he met my mother, so the military played a significant part in my eventual entrance into the world.
When my dad reached his mid-80s and his health began to fail, he confided in me, his eldest child, about the “final arrangements” he had made with the cemetery – the same cemetery where we visited when I was a little girl and where we placed the flags on soldiers’ graves on Memorial Day. When I asked if he had designated the Veteran’s graveside burial, my dad, the hardy, soft-spoken farm boy from Kansas replied, “Naw … I didn’t want you and Gregg (my younger brother) to have to sit through all that.”
When the time came in 2003 to lay my father to rest, yes, my brother and I chose to “sit through all that.” The 21-gun salute provided by uniformed veterans. The beautifully stiff and formal folding and presentation of the flag. The spent artillery shells that arrived in the mail a few weeks later encased in burgundy velvet. We sat through all that. Proudly.
So to all of our veterans and active members of the military who work valiantly to keep us safe and free: Thank you for your brave service to our country.
