HANDLED WITH CARE
Vets group helps keep Memorial Day meaningful
COVENTRY — Alongside hundreds of gravestones sprinkled throughout several local cemeteries, American flags billow in the breeze, each one a subtle reminder of the sacrifice made by the person laid to rest there.
“We’re here to make sure that these men and women are honored on Memorial Day,” Ben Frail said as he stood Saturday morning inside Knotty Oak Cemetery, where he and other Major Sullivan Ballou Camp 3 members had gathered to put flags by the grave sites of veterans.
As the local chapter of Sons of Union Veterans of The Civil War, Major Sullivan Ballou Camp 3 strives to preserve the memory of those who fought for the Union during the Civil War. This weekend, however, that mission stretched beyond that to ensure homage was paid to all veterans — especially to those who died while serving.
The group visited eight cemeteries around Coventry and planted flags by some 400 stones, including that of John Riley, who was Rhode Island’s last Civil War soldier when he died in 1943.
But while, like Riley, many of those buried veterans lived long lives, a lot didn’t.
Among the hundreds of Coventry veterans whose graves were visited this weekend are some who were killed in action; some whose bodies were lost at sea.
“Some of these people, they didn’t make it home,” Frail said. “It’s the reason Memorial Day is so important — these people never left the service.”
Brian Golas moved Saturday up and down rows of headstones, a bunch of flags in his arms as he searched each stone for an indicator that a veteran rested there. For Golas, an Army veteran who teaches physics at Coventry High School, Memorial Day holds a particular significance.
“I was there,” said Golas, who was deployed to Iraq in
5. “:e didn’t all make it out.”
(veryone who fought to make the United States the nation that it is should be honored, he said, adding that it’s particularly important to pay tribute to those who gave their lives to ensure the freedom enMoyed by Americans today.
The lesson is one he’s striven to instill in his students at the high school.
“:e all hit the lottery being born here,” Golas said, dressed in a Coventry 2akers T-shirt, a veterans hat on his head.
“:e’ve created a society where anybody can be an American,” he continued. “:e may argue about how many people to let into this country and how, but once they’re in, nobody Tuestions whether they’re Americans or not.”
Across the country, many annual Memorial Day ceremonies and parades have been called off or modified due to restrictions in place to stem the spread of C2VID-1 . Still, Frail said, it’s crucial that the meaning of Memorial Day not be forgotten.
“:e Must want to make sure that, even though there is a health pandemic going on, they’re getting the honors that we, as Americans, owe them,” he said.