An unflagging loyalty to veterans

My friend Linda Lyons begins her day at the cemetery, walking among the tombstones with her faithful four-legged companion Peaches. Together they visit deceased family members, friends and veterans, stopping at graves to tidy them up, remove litter and say a prayer.

It’s important to her, especially as Memorial Day approaches. On her mother’s side of the family, someone has fought in every war from the American Revolution to the present day.

Linda will often trim around the veterans’ foot stones, and when she spots an American flag on the ground, she promptly uprights it because the flag is important to her. Over the years, she has bought quite a few of them to distribute.

She’s made it her personal mission to pay her respects at the graves of veterans at several cemeteries in Stamford and Darien.

“I’ll walk around, picking up trash and cleaning graves,” she says. “These veterans are men and women from our community, and if they hadn’t gone to war, we wouldn’t have our freedom. They sacrificed their lives for our country, and we owe them our respect. God always seems to tell me which graves to go to.”

A year ago on April 28, she saw an American flag on the ground, and as she picked it up, she came upon the grave of a Civil War veteran who died on that same day in 1863. Alpheus Birdsall, who was from New York and served in the Union Army, died at 18 years old at Harpers Ferry in West Virginia.

She also found the graves of two veterans who were related, resting side by side. One served in the Spanish-American War and the other in World War I. Last year, she discovered gravestones of a soldier from the Italian army and a woman who was in the U.S. Nursing Corps in World War I.

She estimates that she has cleaned about 50 graves, and as Memorial Day approaches, she is prepared to help the veterans put out flags. She also recovers damaged and frayed flags for the them to dispose of properly.

“I have a huge bag of flags that I take back to the VFW,” she said. “Sometimes I find them in the garbage, and I take them out because the American flag is very important to me. A lot of people died for that flag.”

Last December, she assisted Monsignor Thomas Powers, pastor of St. John Church in Darien, at the blessing of the wreaths in the Wreaths Across America event at Spring Grove Cemetery, when they placed them at grave sites and thanked veterans for their service. She also put one on the grave of her uncle, who served in the U.S. Army.

“As I walk around, I look at the graves and say, ‘I know them and I know them,’” she said. “When we pass by the police officer section, it’s like visiting old friends because I know so many of them. I’ll say hi and say a prayer. I feel close to them all.”

Memorial Day, which honors all those who died in the military serving our country, has always been special to her. The holiday originated after the Civil War, when it was known as Decoration Day. In 1868, Gen. John Logan, the commander-in-chief of a fraternal organization of Northern Civil War veterans, campaigned to have a day set apart to commemorate those who died, and soon regional observances began to spread across the nation.

After a century, it was proclaimed a federal holiday in 1971 so that we can honor all those who have died, from the American Revolution to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nearly 160 years ago in his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln remembered the Civil War dead at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery.

That battle, which raged from July 1-3, was one of the bloodiest in the Civil War and had 51,000 casualties. Some 3,100 Union soldiers were killed, along with 3,900 Confederates. The battle marked the turning point in the Civil War.

In his address, Lincoln said: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live.”

This Memorial Day, at a troubled time in our nation’s history, it’s worth remembering all those who have died ... “that this nation might live.”