Our mission continues in the spirit of James J. Peters and his tireless work to help America’s veterans.
Memorial Day is just around the corner, and as is the case each year where I live, the traffic is getting worse. It’s not because Americans are traveling far and wide to celebrate this solemn day of remembrance. It is because they are going away from their homes for a long weekend of what is now unofficially known as the “start of summer.”
So it is left to veterans of military service to either march in our local Memorial Day parade, or in some other significant way, recognize those men and women who have served our great nation in the past. One way to give thanks to deceased military veterans would be to visit a military cemetery on Memorial Day. I was surprised to learn that there are a total of 147 military cemeteries in the United States, which I discovered by simply searching for “list of military cemeteries.”
Another way for anyone to recognize military veterans this coming weekend would be to visit a VA hospital. You will find veterans at all of these facilities, some disabled and some not. Being a vet with a spinal cord injury, I know what it’s like to be a patient at a VA hospital on a long holiday weekend. Many of your fellow veteran patients don’t get to go home on long holiday weekends. I can count about a half-dozen such weekends stuck at a VA hospital over the past 47 years.
I’ve also been lucky on a few occasions recently to represent VetsFirst/United Spinal Association at the official Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Ceremony. At one of these events, after the very moving ceremony and address by Vice President Joseph Biden, numerous veterans groups lined up to present wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We knew that we would be there for a while.
However, we were accompanied the entire time by Air Force honor guardsman Sgt. Wheeler from, I believe, North Dakota. The Sergeant was more “squared away” than I had ever been while serving in the Marine Corps in the late 1960s. He spoke infrequently and he never seemed to break a sweat on a hot May afternoon. I was very impressed by his demeanor. He had a job to do shepherding us and he did it very well.
After a couple of hours, it was finally VetsFirst/United Spinal Association’s turn to lay our wreath. It is hard for me to describe my feelings as I wheeled up to the Tomb accompanied by the Sergeant carrying our wreath and two older, obviously retired military men dressed in white. Except for the respectfully low-volume commands to the honor guardsmen on duty, I felt blessed to be chosen to carry out this mission by my organization.
Whatever you do on Memorial Day, fellow veterans, take a few minutes to say a prayer, or simply just remember fondly those military veterans who have passed on to a better place. See you down the road one day, Jim Peters, Joe Reilly, Cosmo Barone.
Terry Moakley
Chair of the VetsFirst Committee