Posted on 10/09/2006 2:10:49 AM PDT by ResistorSister
CANTON - When 1st Lt. Aaron Seesan died in combat on May 22, 2005, in Iraq, his parents did not know he had written a prescient poem, “Eulogy of the Common Soldier,” as a high-school senior six years earlier.
Tom and Chiquita Seesan attended a dedication Sunday of a memorial with the words of their son’s poem at the Westbrook Veterans Memorial Park on 13th Street NW at Interstate 77. They were joined by Steve and Peggy Buryj, whose son Pfc. Jesse Buryj was killed in Iraq. The granite stone memorial also honors Sgt. Michael Barkey, Staff Sgt. Richard Ramey, Pvt. Megan Adelman, Lance Cpl. Daniel McVicker, Spc. Richard Hardy and Cpl. Dustin Dergan.
“One of his (Aaron’s) classmate’s mother was cleaning out her son’s things,” Tom Seesan said. “She found (the poem) and mailed it to us.”
The Veterans Memorial is only a few blocks from the Buryj home. It’s where Jesse fell through ice in the pond in the third grade and nearly drowned. It’s where he proposed to his wife, Amber, in the gazebo there.
“This was Jesse’s playground,” she said. “It’s so close to home. Almost too close to home.”
One of the 60 others in attendance was Betty Timar of Canton, whose brother, Spc. William E. Knox, a medic, died in Vietnam on May 5, 1968. She came to the service because a song written by John Crookston of Canton honoring five soldiers killed in wars was to be sung at the ceremony.
“It (the ceremony) was beautiful,” Timar said. “The words to the song were beautiful.”
Crookston, who will record the song this week, said it also was dedicated to: Pfc. Francis Crater, whose remains were found recently in Korea, where he died during the Korean War; Pfc. Thomas A. Mangino, who died in Vietnam in 1967; Cpl. Joe Tomci of Stow, who died in Iraq on Aug. 3; and Barkey, another Iraq war casualty.
Brenda Young of Canton understands what it is to grow up in a military family, of the sacrifices that must be made. Her father was in the Air Force for 20 years. The Air Force sends husbands to assignments, but not the family. She had a lot of years without the presence of her father in the house.
“I have a big heart for the sacrifices of military families, just being in it for 20 years,” she said. “But I can’t begin to imagine the sacrifice of those who lost family members.”
The idea for the Salute to the Military memorial began at The Repository’s Women’s Expo Nov. 19, 2005, at the Civic Center, where more than $1,300 of the $3,300 goal was raised. The memorial site was selected by Doug Perry, a veteran and director of the Canton City Parks Department and Tim Allison, creator of the memorial, of Lang Monument.
Reach Repository writer Jan H. Kennedy at (330) 580-8325 or e-mail:
Man is not exempt
All will inevitably end as the dust from whence we came
It matters not of age
Do not mourn me if I should fall in a foreign land
Think this of my passing
In a far-off field a finer soil mixed with the foreign sand
A dust that is American
A dust that laughed, cried, and loved as an American
On this plot there shall be
A little piece of America, a patch for the free man
Which no oppressor can take
From this soil grows grass shimmering a little greener
Brilliant emerald ramparts
A Breeze whisping White Poppies with scent a little sweeter
Flowers towards heaven
Mourn not my terrible death but celebrate my cause in life
Viewed noble or not
I would have sacrificed and gave all that I had to give
Not to make man good
But only to let the good man live.
Wow...That was beautiful.
Thanks so much for sharing this. It is beautiful.
My goodness, he was a special man, even as a teenager! Thank you for posting this.
save
Wow....grabbing kleenex now....
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