Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day, 2009. It's a beautiful day weather-wise, clear, sunny and warm, a typical spring day in NE Ohio and perfect weather for a parade, which we had this morning downtown at 10 a.m. It was a short parade, maybe only ten minutes long at best, with the usual ceremony held at the Main Street bridge of firing the now famous "Kent Cannon" which allegedly served in the Civil War, and the VFW firing a volley over the bridge, followed by the playing of "Taps", to commemorate all the war dead over the centuries. Given that we're currently at war and young men and women continued to be killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, it lends a certain poignancy to the whole ceremony as it wouldn't in a time of peace. The parade usually continues to Standing Rock cemetery, where a ceremony is held at the war memorial there by members of the American Legion and the VFW, mostly old, arthritic portly guys squeezed into their uniforms. There's something sort of sad about it all, that younger men and women don't join these groups and the old guys are the ones who keep them going, old WWII and Korean War vets who are in their 70's and 80's now. The wars we've fought since then haven't been supported or popular as the ones that were fought so long ago, where there was a clear and discernable enemy and the cause was just. I guess the vets now just come home from their tours of duty and try to put the whole thing behind them instead of wanting to hang out with a bunch of their fellow veterans and reminisce over past glories. Today's vets also keep getting called back to do more and more tours of duty and usually by the time they're on their third or fourth tour, they end up getting killed or badly wounded. It's so sad that we send our young people to fight our wars for us, when they are just starting out their lives and have so much in front of them for which to live. But I guess when you enter the military, you pretty much know what you're signing yourself up for and are willing to take that risk.

My father served in WWII as a military policeman guarding German POW's who were brought to the U.S. So my father never saw any combat, never went overseas and was never in harm's way during his years of service, 1942 to 1946. But he still did his duty, served in the U.S. Army and received his G.I. Bill to attend college, which he used to attend Kent State University, where he graduated in 1950 with a Bachelor's Degree in sociology. He died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident on May 29, 1961, shortly after my 4th birthday, so I really don't remember him all that well, if at all. What few memories I do have are shadowy at best and I often wonder how our lives would have been different had he lived. But of course, a question like that can drive you crazy at times, so suffice it to say, I will always very keenly feel his loss, even this many years later. A few years ago, it occured to me that he never got the proper recognition that he deserved for his WWII service. I remember going, every Memorial Day, to his gravesite, where my mom would clean his headstone and clip back the yew trees on either side, and would place the flowers always sent by my paternal grandparents on his grave. I would always notice the flags flying at the graves of the veterans who served during various times of war, and I didn't really know until I was an adult that he was a WWII veteran. So it was either last year or the year before that I contacted the local VFW about getting him a proper grave marker recognizing his service during WWII. I found his enlistment papers on-line but not his discharge records, which may have burned up during a fire in St. Louis during the Vietnam War where many military records were kept. But I was able to successfully obtain a marker, complete with a flag, to place at his grave. So on a cold wintery day in March, I drove out to the cemetery and placed the marker on his gravesite, eased the flag into its spot, stood up, stepped back a few feet, saluted and thanked my father for his service, and then went home and cried the rest of the day, partly out of mourning, but partly out of gratitude that I felt as if I had righted a wrong that had gone on for far too long. It feels good now to drive out there and see a flag snapping in the breeze at his headstone and to know that each and every Memorial Day, he will be remembered for serving his country during a time of war, even if it wasn't in the heat of battle.