Arlington Cemetery

I like cemeteries, I guess I always have. I’m a history buff, and cemeteries are full of that. They became even more interesting to me when I took up genealogy as a hobby about seven years ago and began tracking down the final resting places of distant family members. But I don’t necessarily need to know someone there to enjoy a cemetery. The history of them, and the feeling that even if strangers, the visit and the remembrance is appreciated, is reason enough for me to explore a graveyard.

Having lived in the DC area for 22 years now, I’ve been to Arlington National Cemetery on a number of occasions. You can’t go there and not be awestruck by the sight of the uniform rows upon rows of white headstones. I’ve been their as tourist, tour guide, and as a staff aide (at a memorable memorial service for RFK that is a whole nother story).

But recently, Arlington has stopped being just a resting place for strangers, or famous people I knew of, but who never knew me. This summer, two people I knew, and who knew me, were buried at Arlington. I can’t claim to have been especially close with either of them. One was an employer, the the other a co-worker in the same employ. Friendly acquaintances at best. Regardless, I knew them.

I worked for Sen. Edward Kennedy for three years as the computer geek in his Senate office in the early ’90s. The world was abuzz with this new ‘Internet’ thing, and Sen. Kennedy appreciated the possibilities enough to let me help bring him online, and in doing so he gave me a career. Working for Sen. Kennedy grants you membership to an alumni association for life. At the annual Kennedy Christmas parties, which doubled as staff reunions, former co-workers would reminisce, swap their current business cards, enjoy the costumed skits that were the hi-light of these events, and then angle for a few moments of face time to share a holiday hello with EMK. I’m remembering now, one year when the Senator had performed as Barney, and afterwards, my wife Jennifer and I speaking briefly with him, still wearing his purple dinosaur costume with only the head removed.

Last August I joined hundreds of fellow current and former Kennedy and Senate staffers on the step of the U.S. Senate, to pay our final respects as Senator Kennedy’s funeral motorcade stopped briefly on it’s way to his final resting place at Arlington.

Bill Cahir was exactly the sort of person I could expect to run into at Sen. Kennedy’s annual Christmas parties. We had both worked for Kennedy at about the same time. After the Hill, Bill worked as a reporter, but after the attacks of 9/11 he enlisted in the Marines at the age of 34 and served two tours in Iraq. He returned and ran for Congress, during which I did some work on his campaign and re-connected for a short time. He lost that election, and deployed to Afghanistan in the spring of 2009. Bill was killed on August 13 at age 40. Earlier this week, his wife gave birth to their twin daughters.

The day after Thanksgiving, my daughter Katie and I visited Arlington Cemetery. We were tourists, visiting Arlington House for a National Park Service Passport cancellation. We were volunteers, tracking down and photographing a few headstones to fulfill requests on the Find-a-Grave web site. We were students, searching out how many different religious symbols we could spot. And we were mourners, visiting Sen. Kennedy and Sgt. Cahir’s graves. Two guys I kinda knew. Bill was just a little more than three years younger than me. Not far from his grave in Section 60, we found another recent burial of a young woman just three years older than Katie. We both fell silent at that realization.

Today I returned to Arlington to participate as a volunteer in an event that’s taken place since 1992, the laying of holiday wreaths on graves. I imagined a few dozen people working feverishly, walking rows of graves in the designated sections, quickly leaving a wreath at each. And so it caught me by surprise to find I was one of 6,000 volunteers who showed up at eight am on a cold Saturday morning to pay their respects and place a few wreaths. I placed a few in section 31, one of five sections selected this year, on which approximately 16,000 wreaths were laid. Then I took three wreaths and set off to find the three graves for which I sought to fulfill a Find-a-Grave photo request, one Civil War veteran who died in 1902, and two casualties of the Vietnam war. I went just one for three in my hunt, but the gentleman who had requested a grave photo of his pilot training classmate, Capt David Carl Lindberg, was very appreciative for my photo and to learn I had left a wreath.

And on the way out, I again visited Bill, because I kinda knew the guy. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go to Arlington again without visiting him and paying my respects.

For further reading:

Letter to the Unborn Twins of a Fallen Marine
Politics Daily, 8/31/09

‘In a few months…this could be us’
The Washington Post, 12/12/09