-What is First Flowers?
-Names of Honorees
-World War One
-World War Two
-Korean War
-Vietnam War
-Persian Gulf War
Guestbook:
-Sign It
-Read It
We die with the dying:
See they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See they return, and bring us with them.
- T.S. Elliot
Memorial Day is cookouts and vacation beginnings. It is warm weather and pool openings. It is a longing look ahead to all of the promise the summer season brings. We, as students and staff at Williamsburg Middle School in Arlington, Virginia, believe that Memorial Day is all of these things. We also believe that Memorial Day is something more.
The day we set aside in late May is an opportunity to remember and recognize soldiers whose sacrifice was ultimate. These young men and women we remember have literally given their lives so that we might, in America, enjoy all of the events we take part in on this, and every day. These men and women answered a call to country and didn't return. They are worthy of our remembrance. We hope that we are worthy of them.
We observe First Flowers at midnight because those who have perished in the defense of our liberties were not granted a particular time or circumstance for their deaths. They died at three in the morning on guard duty, eleven in the morning on foreign beaches, four in the afternoon in hospital tents and on lonely mountainsides far from their childhood homes. We intend to remember their lives for they were fellow Arlingtonians, they are in many senses, our people. They are not like us, they ARE us. They were good fathers and brothers and sisters. They were hard workers in their jobs. They might have been excellent golfers or lousy, fine students or not so fine. All of them loved their country.
Enjoy Memorial Day and the ballgames and the gatherings and the anticipations of the days and months to come. Enjoy all of this but first, lay flowers on the monuments and the memorials. For underneath the stone and cement of the structure and the bronze and brass of the now aged names and cannon long silent, there stands steel. It is the mettle of those whose deaths we mark, whose lives we mark, that preserves this day for all of the other sweet things we deign to do.
-Jeffery Fishbein