The Fourth of July holiday is upon us once again. (No, I can’t believe this year has gone by so quickly, either!) Another flag-festooned holiday filled with frolicking and fun with our friends and family and, let’s not forget, those festive fireworks! We celebrate our country, its beauty and scars, alike. We try to forgive it its trespasses while working, together, to facilitate the promise of its founding. And, we remember…
Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, located on the site of the old Joliet Arsenal and, in a rather poetically dichotomous contrast of life and death, adjacent to Midewin Prairie, the first National Tallgrass Prairie in the country, is one of the largest veterans’ cemeteries in the United States. A thousand acres of land dedicated to those who have given at least part, and sometimes all, of their lives in honor of their country.
For those of us who’ve been there to bury a friend, a neighbor or, especially, a beloved grandfather, it is a place of solemnity and honor tinged with grief and colored by the knowledge that their sacrifice, large or small, recent or muted by the march of time, mattered and will not be forgotten. So, this Fourth of July weekend, after the picnics and celebrations are done, I’ll remember Philip W. Johnson (September 12, 1919 – July 6, 2010) USN WWII and honor all the other men and women who believed enough in a promise to stand and serve but we can also celebrate the continuation of life and contemplate the brave struggles we’ve yet to overcome which are exemplified by a human spirit that decides that, together, we can build an entire prairie, one seed at a time.