Rituals recognize soldiers' sacrifices
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Printable FormatCHICAGO TRIBUNE
By Manya A. Brachear and Johnathon E. Briggs, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporter Angela Rozas contributed to this story
When Mildred Taylor of Manteno buried her son James Dean Taylor, 42, six years ago in Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, she was filled with remorse for leaving him where there were only five other tombstones.
"It looked like we'd left him alone in a plowed field," she said.
On Memorial Day, she and family members stood amid more than 10,000 granite headstones surrounding her son, a sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve, and grasped why he wanted the veterans cemetery to be his final resting place.
"Each month we come out here it changes," she said of the garden of markers, tiny American flags fluttering in front of each one. "Out here they're all the same. ... They're all at peace. You come here, you feel the pride he had in the military."
Taylor and thousands of others observed annual rituals of remembrance Monday across the Chicago area in honor of fallen soldiers and veterans.
Under a blue sky, Taylor joined hundreds of friends and family at the 982-acre Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, now home to 10,330 veterans, five of whom died during the war in Iraq.
"It isn't until you come across another visitor--a widow watering the plant she brought for her husband; a little girl planting a flag at her father's headstone; a mother shedding tears on the wreath she will lay for her son--that you realize something. In this place we have come to associate with the quiet of death, the memories of loved ones speak to us so strongly that when we stop and listen, we can't help but hear life," U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said to the military families.
Mothers and spouses of men who died in Iraq tearfully embraced after laying a wreath bedecked with red, white and blue.
Linda Pahnke, who lost her son Shawn on June 17, 2003, said the opportunity to honor him with other survivors reminded her she was not alone.
"I clung on to them. They clung on to me," she said. "When I come out here, I find peace and a lot of sorrow. Each person out there means something to someone."
At the foot of the Grant Park statue honoring the general who first proclaimed "Decoration Day," a Vietnam prisoner of war talked to a small crowd.
"It's a solemn day in so many ways," said retired Maj. Gen. John Borling, who spent nearly seven years as a POW. "A day of reflection, a day of contemplation."
The annual ceremony took place in the shadow of the statue for Gen. John A. Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic who designated a day to decorate fallen soldiers' graves in honor of Civil War veterans in 1868.
The day was renamed Memorial Day after World War I to honor all veterans who died fighting in any war.
At Rosehill Cemetery in Edgewater, Amvets Post 243 remembered soldiers from the Civil War on, beginning with a short parade that stepped off from the corner of Edgewater Avenue and Clark Street. Civil War re-enactors carrying bayonets also marched.
The highlight was a ceremony in which U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and state Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago) presented Chicago war veteran Frank Andrews, 85, with military honors he earned six decades ago for service during the Battle of the Bulge, but never received due to a bureaucratic oversight.
Andrews was a private first class in the U.S. Army during World War II, seeing action in Normandy, northern France, the Rhineland, central Europe and finally Ardennes, Belgium, in 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II.
In a rose garden near one the cemetery's two lagoons, with his family looking on, the retired postal worker was awarded nine honors, including the Bronze Star, the American Defense Service medal, the World War II Victory medal and the Belgian Fourragere.
Andrews, who lives on the Northwest Side, said he was just doing his duty after being drafted at age 23.
When he was discharged in 1945, his mind was not on accolades. He wanted to see his wife and son, James, who didn't recognize Andrews upon his return.
"This is a fine country," Andrews said, taking a moment to thank Mary, his wife of 63 years. "As General [Douglas] MacArthur said, `Old soldiers never die, they only fade away.'"