It is just before midnight as Memorial Day winds down to its last moments. I have just returned to my campsite and it is very unlike the last two nights of revelry as nearly all the campers have left. The Saturday night DJ and Sunday night family movie are silent echoes now, moments to be remembered. Most of my seasonal trailer-owning neighbors have returned to their homes, waiting, perhaps, for more summer to bring them back full time. All of the tent campers have disappeared, as have the overnight and weekend RVs that filled the campus and the swimming pool by day.
There is a group of people at a couple of rented trailers who come here every year for a week. They are still talking loudly, but it disturbs no one as everyone else has either departed or is distant enough for the sound to remain muted. The sky, too, is different. There is a nice half moon and stars, all under a slight haze. Last night there were rain sprinkles and much heat lightning to our north.
But my thoughts have little to do with my environment. It is thoughts of the day. For Memorial Day is not National Bar-B-Que Day, but a time to honor our fallen heroes. Parts of this day were of things I have done many times before. Yet another part was a first-in-my-lifetime experience. And there was also a few moments of sorrow and sadness.
Earlier this week I wrote about a visit to the grave of my father’s family. My father had been in the Army National Guard during the depression. But his arm was mangled in an auto accident and he never served in a war. I have no idea if his father did. I went to the family plot because I discovered the deed to the cemetery. I had not seen it in many years and it always seemed to disappear after its discovery. And so, I travelled back there to a place I had not been since 1972.
After that day, I discovered a piece of paper in my mother’s handwriting tucked inside the deed. I realized it was a cemetery grave number. It didn’t match that of my father’s family. Could it be my mother’s parents’ grave? With this information, and the help of a cousin. A long-lost location in Jersey City was found.
I had never visited this gravesite. I had known little about my grandmother, Margaret, and even less about my grandfather, other than he was a soldier who died in the First World War.
And so I became determined to find this bit of my heritage and Memorial Day was a clear choice. My GPS worked perfectly and I arrived at the cemetery just before 11 a.m. And I attended a memorial mass conducted by the bishop of the Newark Diocese. Though I grew up Catholic, I had never attended a Mass conducted by a bishop and it was interesting to note how the other priests interacted with him. The grave is in a Catholic cemetery. It was first built for Jersey City’s German immigrant population and eventually was dominated in the era of my grandfather’s death by the Irish. And among the current Knights of Columbus in attendance were several of Asian descent.
In front of me was an elderly gentleman clearly fighting to perform the rituals of the mass, mainly standing. Wearing a heavy suit in what was close to 90-degree sun, his face poured sweat at a profuse rate as he struggled to stand up. He nearly fell a couple of times and I made it my business to brace him a couple of times as he sat down.
My cousin Rita had called the cemetery the day before and confirmed our family was buried there. Rita is the eldest of the Gavin-Alford-Rooney-Munzer clan of four cousins. Her mother, Nellie Rooney, had three children and my mother, Nellie’s sister Peggy, had only one child, myself. Their maiden names were Alford. Nellie had married a man named Luke Rooney and Peggy, my mother, had married John Munzer. Our grandmother’s maiden name was Gavin, and Nellie named her first-born son that to carry on the name. My son’s middle name is Alford and he is probably the last of the Alfords unless one of my cousin Luke’s children tosses in that name somewhere.
But the person in the office could not find the grave in the computer. And so I spent some anxious moments and phone calls with Rita before the foreman of the gravediggers took us to the gravesite.
And sure enough, there it was. James Alford, Margaret (Gavin) Alford, and a bit of a shock. It turned out that my mother had a second sister, Mary, who had died at the tender age of 12 as the result of scarlet fever. I had never remembered hearing the name mentioned though my cousin said she me told me about her on my visit to her Maryland home earlier this year.
And so I gazed at the tombstone. It provided some perspective, a bit more about the person I am. Another moment in my search for my personal truth.
The cemetery is only a few blocks away from the Holland Tunnel, which takes you to lower Manhattan. On Facebook earlier in the day, a friend on Long Island posted about how he was having a bar-b-que that day and I sort of invited myself. But I did so for another reason. . .a Memorial Day tradition that I have carried on even after my divorce, visiting my father-in-law’s grave at the national cemetery in Calverton.
I can’t remember ever having taken the Holland Tunnel into New York, but I eventually found myself forced into the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn and I realized I would be travelling through Greenpoint, where my ex-wife’s family comes from.
Months ago, I had packed up my apartment and had a bunch of photos of my nephews growing up. I had placed them in a mailing box and several times asked my ex’s sister for an address to mail them to. Since I was in the neighborhood and had been carrying the box in my car for months, I decided to drop it off at their apartment.
So I rang her bell and the speaker was complete static. I could not understand what was being said. Someone in the hall let me in and the elevator was out of order. I walked up the five flights of stairs to their apartment and knocked. The sister told me she would not let me in without a police officer present. I told her all I wanted to do was give her the photos and left the box at her door. It is a sad footnote to a vicious divorce. If any member of her family reads this, please let her know that I had no intention to scare or upset her. I just wanted to give her a bit of her family’s history and I hope she enjoys the photos.
I still do not fully comprehend why I visit my late father-in-law’s grave every Memorial Day. I used to escort my ex for a couple of years. But then one year she was hospitalized and other times the weather was too cold or hot. It seemed I wound up laying flowers and flags at the site each year. Wounded in Africa during the Second World War, he spent the decades I knew him discussing the war. After his death, I submitted the many papers he had collected about the war to my university’s history department.
Even after I left my ex, I continued this visit. I think there are two reasons for it. The first is that he was wonderful to me when he lived. He was certainly a surrogate father. The second was his family, city dwellers, often do not have the transportation to get there. And so, who is there to honor him?
And so I once again made my visit, laid my flowers and set up flags. And as each year passes, the number of flowers in his section containing about a thousand graves seems to decrease.
Several years ago, I met a man who went to more than 40 different sections at the cemetery and played Taps at each site. It was his way of honoring the fallen heroes. He wasn’t doing for with any group. Just something he chose to spend this day doing. Now I neither have the talent nor physical stamina to do something like that. But I did want to give honor to more than just my father-in-law. And I decided to give a salute to each of his eight neighbors – the three in front, three in back and two as his side.
I have been visiting a number of cemeteries in the past year. In addition to my family, a friend lost her father who was buried next to her late husband. It was today as I was making those salutes, I realized the difference between the private cemetery I had visited earlier in the day and this National Cemetery. Both places are sacred ground. But at a private cemetery, one takes away memories of the past. At this cemetery, one gives honor to the present.
So I left and travelled to my friend and had dinner with his family and some friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. My host truly knows how to grill a steak. And then as darkness fell over the region, I crossed bridges into New Jersey for a return to the campgrounds.
As I drove home (home being where I park the trailer these days), I thought how some of the pictures I took might someday benefit my granddaughter, whom I expect to see for the first time in several years by the end of June. When I was young, only one of my grandparents was alive and he was beginning to be senile. Lydia has the benefit of four grandparents and I hope that somehow we can all bring her a sense of joy and her place in this world. Here’s hoping she knows that there are heroes in her genes.
