Cyndi's Two Cents

Honoring ancestors and military

Commentary.

Although I was blessed to have Great Grandma McCullah in my life for more than three decades, her husband died before I was born.  I knew the stories: he was a civil engineer who came to Illinois when the drainage and levee districts were being organized, floodplain lands were being drained for farming and levees built to protect land from floods.  He met my Great Grandma, they married, and when his work was done in the Illinois River bottoms, they moved to Texas and then Oklahoma where Grandpa Mac was an oil field supervisor.  Years later while visiting her great grandparents in Glasgow, Illinois, their daughter met and later married my grandpa.

I had also heard the stories about how Great-Grandpa McCullah had grown up near Independence, Missouri and was near the same age as President Harry Truman.  Earlier this month, I had the great honor of accompanying my parents on their first-ever visit to the graves of Dad’s great-grandparents.

The well-manicured cemetery lies behind a quaint country church, surrounded by years-old trees.  In a moment of reverent silence, I thanked these ancestors none of us had met.  Had it not been for them, we certainly wouldn’t be here!

While in Independence, we visited the museum and library as well as the graves of the 33rd President of these United States of America and his wife, Bess, with whom my great-grandfather had played ball many times.  I offered a silent prayer for the man who made the difficult decision to use atomic bombs to end the fighting in Japan.

Another opportunity for silent prayer for the dead came the next day when we visited the National World War I Museum in Kansas City.  A sea of 9,000 red poppies, each representing 1,000 World War I soldiers who lost their life during their service, is the first thing you see in the museum’s entrance.

The timing of our mid-May visit to the war memorial is fitting because the poppy is a symbol of Memorial Day.  The seeds of the red field poppy scatter in the wind and can remain dormant for many years.  When the ground is disturbed as it was during the brutal fighting and subsequent burial of those who died in battle, the seeds germinated and the beautiful flowers grew on the barren battle fields and over the new graves.

The remembrance poppy was inspired by the World War I poem “In Flanders Field” written by Canadian physician Lt. Col. John McCrae.  The opening line refers to the poppies that grew over soldiers’ graves in Flanders, a region of Europe that overlies a part of Belgium.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, 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.

I’m forever grateful my parents taught us to honor our ancestors and to pay respect to the men and women who died while serving in the military.  I’m so glad I was able to do just that with them earlier this month.