Decoration Day

Cuzzin' Ricky and I made our annual dead relatives tour again today. Memorial Day started out, you may know, as Decoration Day and was originally a day meant to honor those who had given their lives in the Civil War. It has, unfortunately, evolved into a day to start off the summer with a picnic and of course, in Indiana, the rain day for the Indy 500. A good history of the day can be found here. Even though neither one of our dads was killed in action, both were veterans. My dad served in WW II and Rick's dad served in both WWII and the Korean War. So we spend one morning of Memorial Day weekend hitting a couple of cemeteries and planting flowers.

Both of our dads are buried pretty close to one another as are our grandparents in common. On the short walk to hit all the graves we have to walk past the headstone of T/Sgt. George Grissom. Since my wife always buys plenty of flowers and the Sgt.'s grave was never decorated, we'd plant a couple on his grave as well. Last year we decided to see if we could find out anything about the late Mr. Grissom and went to the library after our flower detail was taken care of. After doing a little research, we found out he was gunner on a Liberator that was shot down over Germany while on his 24th mission. The paper had a couple of articles about his short life - school, parents, photo - but I'm sure his story has been told thousands of times in newspapers the world over. A young man in his prime going off to war and giving his life for his country. The story keeps repeating itself over and over again with no end in sight. So at least once a year T/Sgt Grissom is remembered by a couple of guys who appreciate the fact he gave his life for our freedom. It's not much but it's about all we can do. Maybe you could do the same for someone.

This weekend please remember all who have sacrificed to give us our freedom and those that are serving in the armed forces now. Thanks also to the American Legion for honoring all the veterans this weekend with the American flags.