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A solemn remembrance
SIERRA VISTA — The stillness of the Southern Arizona Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery was disturbed Saturday morning.
As a soft wind blew, rustling the branches of trees, the sounds of hammers pounding on steel bars could be heard, as were the voices of children and adults.
It was the time for American flags to be placed at the graves of those who had served the nation while wearing one of the many types of military uniforms in preparation for today’s Memorial Day observances.
Cemetery Administrator Joe Larson said the cemetery has nearly 4,200 individuals at rest in either full grave sites or in columbarium niches holding their cremains.
Every year girl and boy scouts, and many of their parents help put up the flags, Larson said.
For one daughter and father — Jordan and Dennis Fesser — helping put up the flags is a combination of
patriotic pride and a history lesson.
As dad pounded small holes into the ground, his 9-year-old daughter carried arm loads of American flags.
As a hole was completed she would hand her father a flag and he would then gently pound the top of the small wooden staff into the ground, 12 inches centered on the tombstone, which he measured using a ruler.
At the columbarium area, other scouts were placing flags in line with each column of five niches.
As Jordan and Dennis went from one grave site to another, dad would tell his daughter about what he could ascertain off the marker’s inscription.
“He served in Vietnam,” said Dennis, a former Army captain, of one of the graves.
Jordan looked around and saw a marker indicating the person buried within served in more than one war.
“Yes,” dad said, “some served in many different wars.”
In the cemetery some of the markers indicate some served in three wars — World War II, Korean War and the Vietnam War.
The father and daughter history lesson continued, with dad telling Jordan what they were doing Saturday is special.
Becoming personal, Dennis said “When I was growing up in Illinois, I didn’t know how the flags showed up (on Memorial Day).”
To him, those days of young innocence were a time to have a picnic, or go boating, a time of fun.
The true meaning of Memorial Day was an unknown to him then.
But, it will not be for Jordan.
They recently she visited Washington, D.C., where they went to the World War II Memorial, the Korean War monument and the one honoring those who died in the Vietnam War, a three-decade period of American history from the early 1940s to the early 1970s.
For Jordan, one of the striking memories of the trip was the eight trees at the Vietnam site, one for each of the eight service women who died in that conflict.
She simply proclaimed it showed “women can do things too.”
A member of Troop 104, she asked her dad if she could pound holes into the ground.
They exchanged the steel bar and hammer he had and the flags she carried.
“Just watch my fingers,” he said as he held the bar as she used the hammer with both hands to make some holes.
If there as any disappointment for her it was that there were not enough flags to be placed on the reverse of some of the tombstones which had the names of the spouses, mostly women, who were buried in the graves with their husbands.
“They served too,” Jordan said.
Maybe next year, dad responded.
Jordan has learned the importance of Memorial Day.
“We’re here to honor those who served our country and it’s nice to have a day for what they did,” she said.
Soon after the cemetery carillon struck the nine o-clock hour, all who worked putting up the flags had left.
Once again, quiet returned.