Rolling Thunder and Memorial Day Flowers

“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”  – John 15:13

Rolling Thunder 2017 Pentagon south parking lot
Photo: Ileana Johnson

As soon as we exited the metro station, we heard the roar of thousands of motorcycles revving up their engines or simply lining up in the South and North Parking lots of the non-descript Pentagon building. It was a pleasant low seventies day but the sky was grey with heavy cloudy. We had checked the weather forecast and the report said, low percentage of precipitation. As usual, the forecasters were wrong when it comes to predicting the weather, much less the climate change.

Thousands of bikers on Harleys drove for days from places as far away as California, Puerto Rico, New York, Mississippi, Nevada, and Massachusetts. A Canadian group was resting in the green grass overlooking the South parking lot. Some bikers had served in the military, others have not, but they have come from far and wide to pay their respects to prisoners of war and those still missing in action. Each bike was proudly flying the American Stars and Stripes and the POW/MIA black and white flag. A sea of Old Glory bandana-clad Americans were waiting patiently by their bikes for the signal for the Rolling Thunder ride to begin their parade through Washington, D.C.

 

 

We got back on the metro for a short trip to Arlington National Cemetery. The mood was more somber there. No sooner had we left the escalator for the main entrance that a heavy downpour soaked everyone to the bone. Few people had come prepared with umbrellas or ponchos but everyone braved the driving rain. It was so wet, the guards had given up screening people at the visitor center and the volunteers fanned across the sections assigned to them.

 

In lot 33, we picked up our buckets of 133 roses, red, yellow, pink, white, and tangerine, equal to the number of tombs on each row. Big trucks were unloading thousands of buckets of fragrant roses and volunteers picked them up, one by one. I chose pink and red roses, and I stoically trudged through the rain and searing knee and leg pain to our assigned lot 66.

Our section was composed of many Americans who had served in WWI, WWII, Korean, and Vietnam wars. Some had died young, some on the first day of a war, some on the last day, and some died of old age. Entire families had lost their men, and a few lost the father and the son(s).

My husband David saluted each time as he placed a rose and thanked the person marked on the gravestone for his/her service. Strangely, we were instructed to not place flowers on the graves marked with a Star of David. I did not question why, I assumed it was a religious custom.

My tears were washed away by the deluge and I had a hard time holding the camera. Thousands and thousands of rows of white marble headstone of all the selfless Americans are just names to many, but they were highly decorated Heroes who served our country in so many God forsaken places and died on foreign soil so that we may now live so well and free.

A woman’s name and her year of death was often inscribed on the back of the headstone, as the widow wished to be buried with her Hero husband and chose his gravesite as her eternal resting place.

Each rose, placed one foot in front of the headstone, was a tribute to soldiers who served our country their entire lives or who died liberating people who never thanked them and perhaps never truly appreciated their ultimate sacrifice.

My physical pain and discomfort was a small sacrifice when compared to what these heroic soldiers had done. I was there to thank them for giving me freedom from oppressive communism and the opportunity to thrive and live a good life.

There was a feeling of camaraderie all around us; entire families, parents, children, grandchildren, grandparents, or lone individuals were carrying around buckets of roses and placing them lovingly one by one at each grave, thanking that person for their service and sacrifice.

People had a mixture of sadness and joy on their faces as they were waiting at the metro station; everyone was soaked and shivering but nobody complained. I could only imagine the marches our soldiers had made through jungles, strange territories, in rain, sunshine, and snow, and how many had died fighting while exposed to the harsh elements.

May the Memory Be Eternal for all the selfless men and women, our true Heroes, who gave their lives for our freedom and comfort! May their ultimate sacrifice remind us that “freedom is not free!”

 

 

 

Arlington National Cemetery is 150 Years Old

There was a quiet and peaceful stillness about the cemetery this January day. It was snowing heavily and the pristine white was accumulating between thousands of rows of headstones marking the graves of our true heroes who gave their lives in battle or died in old age, having served our country for decades, fighting enemies to preserve our freedom.

A very old general was being buried that day and the Honor Guard and the ceremonial  horses were barely visible in the heavy snow. I could hear the cadence of the steps and the horse hooves beating rhythmically against the asphalt.

The next day the sun shone over a blustery day, over graves covered in powdery crystalline snow – a pristine whiteness blanketing the peaceful eternity.

Arlington National Cemetery is always quiet it seems, in spite of its proximity to a very busy interstate, Fort Myers, and the Pentagon. A brick fence surrounds the cemetery, delineating its boundaries. In May this year, the final resting place of hundreds of thousands of Americans who served since the Revolutionary War, will be 150 years old.

Union Army Private William Henry Christman of Pennsylvania, was the first military burial at Arlington. Since then, over 250,000 military personnel and some spouses had been interred in the national cemetery, the land of the former 1,100 acres Arlington House estate.

When the Civil War erupted, Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, owned the estate and lived there with her husband Robert E. Lee.  Built in 1802, the Arlington House was certainly not intended to be a national cemetery.

Built by George Washington’s adopted grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, Arlington House was meant to be a living memorial to George Washington. Custis chose the name “Arlington” for the estate because it was the name of the Custis ancestral home in Virginia. Custis’ daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis married her childhood friend and distant cousin, Robert E. Lee. They lived at Arlington House until Union soldiers occupied the estate in May 1861.

When Mrs. Lee did not pay estate taxes, the federal government confiscated the property and sold it at public auction on January 11, 1864; it was purchased by a tax commissioner “for government use, for war, military, charitable and educational purposes.” On June 15, 1864, Arlington was officially designated as a national cemetery by Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs.

The eldest son of General and Mrs. Lee, Custis Lee, filed a lawsuit as the legal owner of the property, on grounds that the land had been illegally confiscated and, in December 1882, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in his favor. The property was returned to Custis Lee because it was confiscated without due process. Congress then bought the property from Lee for $150,000. The National Park Service administers and maintains the grounds and Arlington House (Custis-Lee Mansion).

In addition to military personnel, novelists, journalists, non-fiction authors, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, famous architect and civil engineer who designed the layout of the streets in D.C., the Polish pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski, James Parks, the former Arlington estate slave who dug the first graves at Arlington, Joe Lewis, a sports figure, prominent space explorers, presidents and families (George Washington Parke Custis, Edward Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,  Robert F. Kennedy, Robert Todd Lincoln, William Howard Taft), medical doctors, prominent minorities, chief and associate justices, politicians, and prominent women figures are buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Arlington National Cemetery pays tribute to our heroes, men and women of honor, who have served our nation, and have made the ultimate sacrifice by giving their lives for our freedom. The 624 acre cemetery is landscaped and shaded by 8,500 exotic and native trees. Volunteers place wreaths and American flags on each grave on Veteran’s Day and at Christmas time.

On March 4, 1921, Congress approved the burial of an unidentified American soldier from World War I in the white marble tomb sarcophagus of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. To the west, three graves with white marble slabs flush with the ground are crypts of the unknown soldiers from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. The sarcophagus which shows some tiny cracks of time is adorned by the words etched in marble, “Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.”

The crypt of the unknown Vietnam soldier was left empty since 1998 when mitochondrial DNA tests revealed that the body exhumed on May 14, 1998 was that of Air Force 1^st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie, who was shot down near An Loc, Vietnam, in 1972.

In section 26 of the cemetery, there are 2,111 Civil War Unknowns buried together.

Among the 31 Monuments and Memorials, there are hundreds of group burials. These were not unknown soldiers, they have died together and their families chose group burials. Most noted are the 18 sailors who died aboard the aircraft carrier, USS Forrestal on July 29, 1967 and the largest group, the 250 men from the USS Serpens, interred in 52 caskets. Their U.S. Coast Guard ammunition ship exploded and sank in Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on January 29, 1945.   

The eight men who died in April 1980 in Iran in an attempt to rescue 53 American hostages from Teheran are buried together across from the Memorial Amphitheater. The 184 victims of the September 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon are buried together in the 9-11 Memorial in Section 64. Five families did not receive any recovered remains of their loved ones. The five-sided granite marker lists the names of those who died at the Pentagon and on the American Airlines  Flight 77.

The 3^rd U.S. Infantry Regiment is the oldest active-duty infantry unit, dubbed the Old Guard, and has been serving the nation since 1784. Among its many duties, The Old Guard maintains a 24-hour vigil at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a ceremony to behold. The sentinel guarding the tomb rain, snow, or shine in impeccable uniform, is changed every hour with pomp and circumstance, white glove check of the weapon, and elaborate 21 steps marches and 21 seconds pauses to cardinal points in remembrance of the 21-gun salute. After saluting the tomb with its unknown recipients of the Medal of Honor, the sentinel takes his place on a black mat.

Arlington National Cemetery is an essential part of our American history. We honor the heroes interred there in the last 150 years, men and women who have given their service and lives to our country, making the ultimate sacrifice for freedom.