Tag Archives: Spring Grove Cemetery

Memorial Day Eve

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I know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day and I’ve sometimes been critical of those who don’t. The publication date for this article is the day before Memorial Day which means it’s my official Memorial Weekend post. The article’s primary focus is the funeral of a U.S. Army veteran who died peacefully at the age of ninety. He clearly does not fit the definition of the folks that Memorial Day was created to honor. On one hand, I’m not completely comfortable having the subject of my Memorial Weekend post be someone who should not be connected to the holiday in any way at all. On the other hand, there’s a very good chance that I would not have attended Hezekiah Perkins’ funeral if it did not take place during Memorial Weekend. That statement is quite possibly true of almost everyone who did attend his funeral on Saturday.

I first saw his name on Friday afternoon. I’d been looking for Memorial Day related activities when local news sources posted a story from Spring Grove Cemetery. The Korean War veteran had purchased a plot and paid for his funeral twenty years ago. Arrangements were progressing to assure that the ceremonies included military honors. There was no question about a proper funeral and burial taking place; There was a big question about who would attend. None of Perkins’ family lived close enough or were healthy enough to come. The cemetery was asking people to join their employees and a small detachment of soldiers in saying a final farewell.

The response was impressive and heartwarming. I arrived about fifteen minutes before the scheduled ceremony and had to park roughly half a mile away. Others parked much farther away than that. Not only was the crowd large, it was racially and generationally diverse. As might be expected, the largest single category was definitely military veterans

Many of those veterans arrived on motorcycles in parade formation. My unscientific guess is that somewhere between fifty and a hundred motorcycles rolled by the grave site. The motorcycles were parked and their riders walked back to where the hearse that had followed them now stood. Friday’s announcement had said the Spring Grove employees would act as pallbearers but that was very much unnecessary. That chore was quite willingly handled by a pre-selected group of motorcyclists.

The ceremonies were brief but meaningful. A detail from Fort Knox removed and folded the flag that covered the coffin. Although the word “thousands” has slipped into a headline or two, most references to the crowd say “hundreds”. My own guess as to crowd size, made while I was part of it, is 400-500. A few, such as workers at the nursing home where he lived most recently, actually knew Hezekiah Perkins but the vast majority were complete strangers. There is certainly no reason to get too puffed up about standing in the grass for a few minutes on a nice spring day, but it’s an unquestionably nice thing that so many Cincinnatians did just that and made that final farewell quite a bit louder than it would have been otherwise.

The Spring Grove visit occurred in the afternoon. I started the day with the Butrims and breakfast at the Anchor Grill followed by traipsing around my favorite bridge. A previous visit had left the couple firmly split on Cincinnati chili but I got a 2-0 favorable vote on goetta. We have been digital friends for a while but this was our first meeting in the analog world. The visit came in the middle of a Kentucky focused trip which, like all of their many road trips, is being reported semi-realtime on Facebook. See Anna’s version here and Joe’s here.

Another Sesquicentennial

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The American Civil War began with the shelling of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and for the last several years we have been commemorating the 150th anniversary of events that led up to it, were part of it, and were precipitated by it. There are many theories about the origin of what we now call Memorial Day, and, while specifics vary, almost all place the roots in that devastating conflict. The most recognized story of a formal beginning places that beginning a hundred and fifty years ago on May 30, 1868.

I attended two Memorial Day events this year. The first was a parade in nearby Loveland, and the second a gathering at Ohio’s largest cemetery, Spring Grove.

In Loveland, a police cruiser with flashing lights cleared the way with members of the local American Legion Post leading the actual parade. A group of firefighters, looking exactly like I’d want my fire department to look, was close behind. Love the mustache.

What followed was everything a parade should have: high school marching band, classic cars, and freshly polished fire trucks. The parade ended near Veterans’ Memorial Park where ceremonies were to take place. I was watching the time, however, and left just as they were getting started.

The setting for the Spring Grove ceremonies was the Civil War section where 999 Civil War dead are buried in three circular plots containing 333 graves each. These are not, of course, the only Civil War soldiers buried in the cemetery. There are 41 Civil War generals buried at Spring Grove. For the majority, however, it is an honorary (brevet) title. The cemetery’s website has some words about the war’s impact and a link to a list of those generals here.

Although individual events were certainly held earlier, 1868 is the year that the observation of Decoration Day was wide spread and coordinated. That was when Grand Army of the Republic Commander, John A. Logan, issued an order calling for gatherings on May 30 “…for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades…”. Spring Grove was one of 183 cemeteries participating that first year. There were 336 in 1869. Michigan made Decoration Day a state holiday in 1871 and other states were not far behind. It was made a federal holiday in 1888. I was unable to find a date for an official change from Decoration Day to Memorial Day. It seems to have happened somewhat naturally shortly after the first World War.

The G.A.R.’s successor, The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, played a major role in the day’s activities and the 6th Ohio Volunteer Infantry helped maintain an awareness of the holiday’s Civil War era roots. They presented the colors at the beginning of the services and fired a twenty-one gun salute near their end.

Spring Grove Cemetery was barely sixteen years old when the Civil War broke out.  An excerpt from Spring Grove: Celebrating 150 Years talks about the war, the cemetery, and those early Decoration Days. In describing the very first, it states that “To end the program the Ladies of the Floral Committee led the crowds around the mounds of graves, strewing them with flowers.” Today, The Auxiliary to the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War filled the role of the Floral Committee in helping everyone present reenact that ritual from 150 years ago.