Our Memorial Day celebration normally takes several parts. The first part we go and decorate graves. Mostly family, but a few other special people as well. It takes about 30 petunias that we plant every year and we hit 3 different cemeteries.
One such extra special person is Hazel Westgate. She came to Iowa City fresh out of library school and stayed the rest of her life. I was one of many young people she helped with their love of reading. For example, she introduced us to the Thornton Burgess books (which you should all read if you haven’t). She also collected a very nice folder of early Laura material that I was grateful to be entrusted with. Thank you Hazel.
The second part of Memorial Day celebrations is the services at the cemetery. It’s always haunting to hear taps come floating back over the hill. As a further memory to our soliders who have given their lives for our freedom we always plant a flower on the memorial marker of Junior Herring who attended the same high school as my grandmother and who’s photo appeared in their annual with a gold star she pasted on the year she graduated. (She kept track of her fellow City Highers with gold stars for killed in the war and silver stars for wounded in action.) Junior was on the Arizonia during the attack on Pearl Harbor and never made it back home. May he rest in peace.
Then having remembered family and soliders we have a family picnic. I hope you had a happy Memorial Day and if you’d like to read more about Memorial Day in small towns, I suggest the chapter on it in John E. Miller’s (also author of Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder) Looking for History on Highway 14.
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