Yes, Memorial Day is still 11 days away, and next week might be a better time to talk of Memorial Day remembrances. But the good folks of the Warren American Legion Auxiliary asked us to speak in advance of next week about the significance of the poppies they sell every year as an act of remembrance, and as a way to raise money and awareness for veterans programs. The Auxiliary does such good work every day of every year. Who could say no?
Remembering in reverence is really a very personal thing. There are, no doubt, as many ways to remember as there are people. And there are as many people who should be remembered as there are people.
It doesn’t take a “Hero” to be a hero. It doesn’t take being a hero to justify being remembered.
Sometimes it takes the parade down main street, with loud trombones and tubas and fanfares to remember. Sometimes it takes the peace and quiet of the lone trumpeter on a distant hill playing, “Taps.”
Often the remembrance is for the men and women in the uniforms of the soldier, the sailor, the airman, the Marine, or the coast guardsman. After 911, we learned again how proud, too, are the uniforms of the firefighter, the police officer, the emergency medical technician and the fire chaplain.
We also learned how proud is the uniform of the office worker, the restaurant dishwashers, the newsstand clerks, the innocent bystanders, the hard-working janitors and the middle management folks who would come to work early each day, not to mention the airline flight attendants, the moms and dads on board, and the construction workers and truck drivers who volunteered on the pile for weeks, risking their lungs and their health without a thought for their own safety.
We learned this year, too, of how proud is the inspiration of the Rutgers University senior, Pamela Sue Schmidt of Warren Township, who was cut down in the prime of her life. She was so young, so smart, so energetic, so kind and so positive. Her remembrance, fashioned by friends and family who were inspired by her example, was to do as she would do: create a scholarship so that future students like herself could pay her spirit forward full of youth, smarts, energy, kindness and being positive.
The truth of the matter is that the folks who are remembered aren’t remembering themselves. The most humbling thing about remembrance is that the folks who are being remembered, like Ms. Schmidt, and like all the other loved ones in uniform as well as our family-members, our friends, our work colleagues, our mentors and our charges who are now departed, all would most likely be saying on Memorial Day: “It’s the other way around. You say you remember me? And yet, it is I who remember you… quietly, and in my own way, a lone trumpeter on a distant hill, remembering fondly.”
So, when you see an American Legion Auxiliary member offering poppies for sale leading up to Memorial Day, to help raise a little money and awareness for veterans programs, make a little donation, display the poppy, and read up a little bit about the history and significance of the poem, “In Flanders Fields,” written in 1919 by Major John McCrae, a poet, doctor, and brigade surgeon with the first Brigade of the Canadian Artillery Forces. Then find some distant hill somewhere, and read quietly:
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row,/ That mark our place; and in the sky/ The lark, still bravely singing, fly/ Scarce heard amid the guns below./
“We are the dead. Short days ago/ We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,/ Loved, and were loved, and now we lie/ In Flanders fields./
“Take up our quarrel with the foe:/ To you from failing hands we throw/ The torch; be yours to hold it high./ If ye break faith with us who die/ We shall not sleep, though poppies grow/ In Flanders fields.”
For Essays And Editorials
Denis J. Kelly
June 2, 2011
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