HIGH-PROFILE HIGH-FIVES
Memorial Day ceremony focuses on heroes’ sacrifices — not picnics
O’Ryan “The O’Mazing” Arrowroot gives high-fives to the crowd along Butler Street on Monday as he walks in the Lawrenceville Memorial Day parade dressed as Uncle Sam. More Memorial Day photos in
In one of the more sobering Memorial Day ceremonies, the pictures, names and hometowns of nearly 300 Pennsylvanians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 flashed for 10 seconds each on a movie screen in the auditorium at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Oakland on Monday morning.
More than 200 veterans, relatives of veterans and residents who just wanted to honor the fallen watched in silence as the list wound on for 53 minutes as songs emblematic of the moment played, including “Never Let Go” by Bryan Adams that begins with the line: “Can you lay your life down, so a stranger can live?”
John McCabe, CEO and president of the museum, introduced the ceremony by explaining that it was intentionally stripped down.
“Today, Memorial Day is somewhat misunderstood,” he told the audience, largely because the focus on the holiday has become the “picnics, car sales and special deals in stores” that take place.
“But what we’re going to do is remember the people who gave the ultimate sacrifice,” said Mr. McCabe, himself an Army veteran. “We don’t have fanfare and speeches by politicians. We’re going to honor the nearly 300 fallen service members from the war on terror. These are just young men and women, sons and daughters, aunts and uncles and teachers who died. And that is what this day is about.”
The emotional presentation was made all the more dramatic by the fact that the movie screen hung over the words of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address that are etched into the wall at the back of the auditorium.
It all added up to a solemn occasion that drew some to tears, like Tammy Harper of Crafton, who came to honor her sister, Army Lt. Col. Juanita Warman, who was killed in 2009 in the assault at Fort Hood, Texas.
She agreed with Mr. McCabe that the true meaning of Memorial Day can get lost
today.
“Absolutely,” she said just after the ceremony. “It’s not just about picnics. But people really don’t understand unless they’ve been affected.”
Her sister was one of 13 people who were killed and 30 who were injured on Nov. 5, 2009, when Army Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire on the base. He was later charged, convicted of murder and sentenced to death, but the shooting was also later classified as an act of terrorism because of evidence that he had been radicalized by an imam in Yemen.
And as much as her family has been affected by her sister’s death, it was overwhelming how many have died since 2001 just in Pennsylvania.
“I’m just amazed,” Ms. Harper said. “There have been so many affected, so many families.”
Ceremonies like the one at Soldiers & Sailors help, she said, because “if there was no recognition or honor, then families would lose hope and feel, like, why even bother” trying to remember them.
Janine Gould of Penn Hills has two adult children in the military and a third child, her son Zachary, 16, who served in the color guard for Monday’s ceremony at the museum. He might join the military after high school as well.
Seeing picture after picture of mostly young men, and a few women, in their teens or 20s who died in combat “is sobering,” she said.
“I mean, as a mother [of members of the military] you’re proud of them, but you know you might have to face that” someone in your family could die in combat, she said.
It is because of that awareness that she thought Monday’s bare-bones service was so appropriate.
“I think the service of the veteran speaks for itself,” she said.
Few in attendance had the viewpoint of Robert Gale, 97, from Squirrel Hill, who came to honor those who faced what he did not have to during World War II.
As a member of counterintelligence serving in London and Marseilles, he did not have to face combat. But he knew others who did, including many members of his 1942 graduating class at Dartmouth.
“Ninety-one percent of our class served in World War II and 33 of them died,” he said.
Now, like then, he noted, most of the death was among the youngest who served.
The ceremony “was very moving,” he said. “But I noticed that the youth were most of the casualties and many were from small towns.”