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Memorial Day, Not Barbecue Day
By Doug Patton
May 27, 2002

Every Memorial Day weekend, my family and I travel to a small cemetery on a hillside surrounded by rich Iowa farmland to attend a special ceremony honoring the local men who served in wartime and are now buried there.

It is really quite poignant. After a prayer, the names are read. Beginning with the War of 1812 and proceeding through Vietnam, the names of those who served in each of America's armed conflicts, who are buried in that little cemetery, are read aloud. An aged VFW honor guard is on hand to provide a 21-gun salute, followed by a lone bugler playing Taps.

Some of those named had not yet come of age when they lost their lives in battle. Some came home to start families and businesses and grow old in that community, or perhaps they settled there after their war years to start a whole new life. Still others migrated elsewhere before returning home to the place of their childhood to live out their final years and be buried in this little cemetery.

Whatever their circumstances, they are remembered each Memorial Day at this brief ceremony, and it is the reading of the names that truly personalizes the memory of those lost.

When the names of those who served in World War I are read, my maternal grandfather is among them. He and my grandmother settled there in the 1930s and made the community their home. She died in 1960, he in 1978. They are buried in that little cemetery.

For the past four years, my father's name has been read among the many who served in World War II. As a 22-year-old NCO on Eisenhower's staff during the planning for D-Day, only a freak accident resulting in a broken bone kept him from sailing across the English Channel on June 6, 1944, with the rest of the invasion force. Like most WWII vets, he never talked much about his wartime experiences, but he did tell me about that one, and I believe it always haunted him that the young man who took his place was one of the first to fall on Omaha Beach.

As I stood with my brother and two sisters looking down at the graves of our parents this weekend, I realized that my respect for them has grown every year since their deaths. Born in 1922, they were high school sweethearts during the Great Depression. Shortly after receiving their diplomas in the spring of 1940, their world was at war.

It is hard for those of us who followed them to grasp that concept. The closest I can come is to remember the pressure I felt at the time of my high school graduation in the spring of 1966. Like most of my generation, I had three choices, college, Canada or Vietnam. At least we had choices.

The class of 1940 had most of their choices made for them. Within eighteen months of high school, they were faced with the very real possibility that Hitler and the Axis powers would dominate the entire world and occupy or destroy America in the process. For all of our 1960s Cold War fear of international communism, there was never any real threat that the forces of Ho Chi Min would conquer or even attack the United States. So, my ability to truly comprehend the world of their youth is limited.

We spoke with the aging chaplain of the local VFW after the services. We reminisced about people and things in that special little town that had held so many memories. He thanked us for coming, and we told him we wouldn't miss it for anything. And then he said something that made me sad for my nation. He said, "I don't know how much longer we'll be able to do this...It's only us old-timers who are involved. The younger members don't seem to care about it. They always want to know, 'What's in it for us.'"

I told him that for the last fifty years, America has not had the will to win a war. I told him that those of us who served during Vietnam have never had the sense of gratitude that vets of his era felt.

Yet I knew that more than anything, I was trying to convince myself. The truth is that I am deeply saddened by the realization that less than a year after September 11th, VFW members of my generation refuse to tear themselves away from their barbecues long enough to honor my father and grandfather on Memorial Day.