Posted on 07/17/2009 8:52:56 AM PDT by shove_it
July 17, 2009 | A few days after Memorial Day, I walked across the sprawling, plush lawn of Arlington National Cemetery. I headed toward Section 60, a remote area of the famous burial ground, where 600 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest. Gina Gray, former public affairs officer at the cemetery, had testified that mismanagement at Arlington had resulted in callous treatment of personal mementos and artifacts left on grave sites in Section 60. The sun was out after several days of rain. As I approached the gravestones, I saw that Gray was right.
Left out in the rain to rot were crayon drawings by children who had lost a parent, photographs of soldiers with their babies, painted portraits and thank-you notes from grade-school kids to fallen soldiers they had never known. Colors of artworks ran together. Photos were blurred and wilted. Poems and letters were illegible wads of wet paper. A worker in a brown uniform wandered among the graves, blasting the headstones with a power washer without regard to what was left of the mementos -- or the obviously uncomfortable mourners looking on. Some items got further soaked. The worker blasted others across the grass. Many of them would end up in a black trash bin in the cemetery's service area.
Arlington's poor treatment of the mementos and gifts -- testaments to the personal cost of the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East -- appeared to stand in contrast to practices at other cemeteries.
[...]
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Remember, they are government workers. Caring is not part of the job description.
Yes.. Or stand at the grave and read it (or put laminate it and weight it down with a rock or something).
My grandmother died before my wedding. I thought about leaving an invite on her grave but for multiple reasons (security reason, the garbage factor, etc) decided not to.
Instead I sat there and read it to her then brought it back home with me. Cried a lot too.
LQ
They specifically DO tell people not to leave stuff. It is posted on signs. But I don’t think any of them is heartless enough to march up to someone and demand they don’t leave artifacts. They see it, and I’m sure they just assume the artifacts will be cleaned up next time that plot area is policed. I say cleaned up deliberately, because that is what it has to be.
I understand what you mean, and I think the folks there who don’t practice a little vigilance and compassion DO need a talking to.
I have seen them, the ground crews with their little tractors and stuff, but I haven’t seen people being completely inappropriate like this person has.
And I will be willing to bet money I have spent FAR more time at Arlington over the years than the liberal POS writing the article. Be as that may, I could see where some of the caretakers would be oblivious on occasion. They aren’t members of the Tomb Guard, after all. They are union-paid government workers, is my bet.
I’m having a hard time getting very upset by this. What are they really expecting the cemetery staff to do? Arlington is enormous, and I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect that they’d be able to carefully bag and tag everything left on a grave there.
I get the sentiment, but I also realize that there’s a reasonableness test that is appropriate as well. They don’t have *that* many staff and they have a huge job to do that as far as I can tell they care for those grounds with dignity and class. So they sweep it with a leaf blower... I probably would too.
While I don’t think it’s always possible for the weather to be accommodating, I would have guessed that whatever protocol is used for the Vietnam Memorial on the retrieval and care (or disposal) of momentos left behind would be applied at Arlington.
Once upon a time, flowers sufficed at a grave site to show rememberance. (Sticking my neck out...) But is it really more “caring” to leave all manner of objects behind on a grave and expect the grounds keepers to treat such things like the bones of the interred? Flowers eventually whither and blow away naturally. Man-made objects can’t do that.
Until my husband died, I didn’t know that being buried together was an option. The best deal one gets from the gov.
I am not familiar with Salon.com and it's reputation. Having not returned to ANC for 46 years, my frame of reference leaves off at JFK's funeral and the massive effort taken to maintain his grave site in an orderly fashion. The apparent lack of respect for Section 60 graves and the mismanagement asserted in these articles is troubling to me.
As a poster on another thread said - it appears there are more unknown soldiers buried their than we thought.
You are absolutely correct. I visited the Memorial about 2 weeks ago. A portion of the original fence is still up on the west side and people still put personal items on the fence as a memorium. Every 90 days all items are removed, tagged, and stored in the musuem.
Its still very moving.
In memory of Robert Chipman, Major, USAF (Ret)
The left destroyed support for our military and the war effort to get a radical left wing President. Now that they are in the White House it is their war to lose. They need to reeducate the American people to love their Government and support the war effort. This is a show of "patiotism".
What Obama is doing in Afghanistan is the same thing we did in Iraq. It's called a surge. He is following the same war strategy as Bush. I don't like Pres. Obama but I do support his efforts in Afghanistan. We need to encourage him to support the war financially with appropriate defense spending.
All of these items interfere with keeping the grounds neat and orderly.
Thank you, sir, for serving the country.
I am grateful also to your parents, both for serving the country and raising such a great American.
My parents are buried in section 68, which is one removed from section 60. Section 60 is one of the larger groups of plots, and I suspect there is a lot of traffic there, both from ceremonies for newly buried military personnel to the families making treks there whose loved ones have been buried within the last year or two.
I have seen the traffic through that area, and there are a lot of flowers, pictures, pieces of paper and such. I have seen some parts that were unsightly to me, but my guess is that they try to let people take advantage of the gray area between “no artifacts at all” to “we will remove the items when we get to them”. As a result, there are a lot of things heaped around there.
As for Salon, take my word on it. They are one of the most virulently leftist websites there are. The poster above had it right when he said they probably have blood on their hands.
Articles like this from people like those at Salon REALLY piss me off. They sound oh, so concerned, speaking with hushed voices how terrible it is, how someone should do something about this terrible injustice, but do everything in their power to ensure our men and women are spat upon both literally and figuratively when they come stateside. I detest them.
If God was interested in being JUST to those on earth, there would have been lightning bolts when Salon personnel entered the property.
The workers at the National cemetery where my husband is buried are very caring.
Okay now I am teary eyed.....what a sweet thing to do....
I'll bet Bill Clinton was pretty mad he didn't get to bulldoze all of those along with the evidence he ordered destroyed.
Govt employees. What do you expect?
It turned out to be a real blessing for my sister and I. My parents died within 2 months of each other last fall. They were from different religious backgrounds and we weren’t sure what to do.
Dad was a vet of WWII - and my sister had the idea of looking into the National Cemetery. It was the perfect solution for us on so many fronts.
Dad’s funeral was absolutely beautiful .. poetic really - the 21 gun salute .. taps w/the bugler off in the woods .. it was cool, misty and rainy..
When Mom passed away a mere two monthes later it was comforting to know they would be together.
They will do anything to distract from The Agenda. So they throw what they think is red meat out every day.
I’m sorry that you lost your parents so close together.
A military service is very moving. One of our boys is a officer in the Navy. He was able to make arrangements to present me with the flag. It was a surprise to me and very emotional for him. The cemetery people said that was a first for them, and they cried along with the rest of us.
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