The annual POW/MIA Vigil: a lesson for righteous militants
Yeah, we picnic, we party, we parade, we breakfast. As brothers of Vietnam Veterans Inc., we also visit funeral homes, cemeteries and, with especial dedication, VA hospitals.
Something else happens, too.
On the third weekend every September — Sept. 16 and 17 this year — the brothers, wives, families and friends of VVI maintain a POW/MIA Vigil outside Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum, 4141 Fifth Ave., in the city’s Oakland neighborhood.
One at a time in 15-minute increments for 24 consecutive hours, we and our military veteran friends in the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and veteran military organizations man a flag on the front lawn of Soldiers & Sailors.
It’s a tradition that began 30-some years ago in Point State Park, Downtown.
An opening ceremony begins at noon Saturday. At dusk Saturday, there is a candlelight ceremony, and at noon Sunday, a closing ceremony.
All of it pays poignant tribute to our brethren who returned from war in a body bag or who have been missing in action for countless years in a nameless alcove of hell.
In their honor we stand, one by one, quietly, reverently, gratefully, somberly.
Watch as proud veterans take turns.
Last year, one vet did his watch with his small son beside him. Another vet was accompanied by his grown special-needs son.
The landscape is peopled by veterans and their kin and fellow patriots during the daylight and early evening hours.
Gradually the sun vanishes and the nearest streets, Fifth Avenue and perpendicular Bigelow Boulevard, clear of pedestrians and traffic. Buses become infrequent. Silence settles in for the night. Saturday evening surrenders to Sunday morning. Traffic signals change; no one, save a lone flag-manning veteran, notices.
Those who stand watch earlier Saturday evening observe numerous lights dancing on and off in the diagonally located Cathedral of Learning. By late night, activity even there has stalled. Now and then an illuminated room darkens as the one adjacent to it brightens — a cleaning crew evidently working through the vast vertical structure.
But for now, the silence is disquieting.
It’s the most ideal time at which to recall those we lost, those who vanished, those who returned in despair, altered and maybe broken.
All of us in VVI are old enough to remember the protesters of the 1960s, squawking about one cause or another, including the socalled anti-war crowd.
How often I’ve wondered how many of those righteous militants — then and now — have walked the halls of a VA hospital and observed the armless, the legless and the otherwise homeless — our brother and sister veterans who weren’t as fortunate as we.
Seeing so many veterans in wheelchairs brings us up short, like the playing of “Taps.”
For all of our sacrificed, our lost and our wounded, we stand with that flag each September — remembering, honoring, yearning to spend another hour with our sacrificed warriors.
Now and forever, we salute them.