JACKSONVILLE —
Dear Editor,
It has been my responsibility the past decade since my father’s death to put out the Memorial flags at my family’s cemetery plot in the City cemetery.
On Saturday,my grandchild and I made this journey once again. On the way there,she asked me why we do this every Memorial day? I explained to her that this is how we honor the ones that came before us,the ones who fought in wars to protect the freedoms we all enjoy here in the United States,that this is a way to show we have not forgotten the huge sacrifices these loved ones made for us, that we remember.
Upon arrival,I put out the flags as I usually do at each headstone.
My grandchild seemed unusually quiet as she looked over the grounds of the cemetery. I asked her what she was thinking about? After a few moments she said,” It makes me sad”.
Thinking she was sad for the relatives she never knew interred there, I started trying to console her. She quickly objected,telling me, “Bubba,(her grandmother name for me) I’m sad because so many HAVE forgotten !!” She pointed up at the City’s big flagpole situated not far from our lot with no flag flying. Then she pointed down at the grounds with grass growing to our knees, a shabby sight indeed. Finally she looked out and down the hill counting the little flags, less than twenty she tells me,and six of them are ours! Sometimes a child’s view has the clarity we adults can miss, I think to myself.
I admitted to her that I too was sad that so few seemed to remember on this day,especially now when our country is so threatened,that maybe this will be a good project for a school,the Scouts,or a service organization, that we can do better than this,that I would see what I can do.
Pat Walker Graham,“Bubba”,
Jacksonville
Letters to the Editor
June 1, 2011
Children can often see things clearest
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