Lincoln's Wyuka Cemetery in the morning is a stunningly beautiful place. It is filled with gentle rolling hills, winding roads, dew-covered grass, weather-worn stones marking the resting places of both the common and celebrated, and powerful and wise trees in such great number that they keep the hallowed ground insulated and silent in spite it being located essentially in the exact heart of a city. It is a place where saints and sinners fight for elbow room and salvation; where history seeps from the ground with the footstep of each visitor; and where one can feel nature steadily and stealthily with each passing season and each passing moment reclaiming what was once hers.
It also has a sizable contingent of veterans buried there; I thought of them - and of all veterans - this past Memorial Day. I don't personally know any vets buried there - my father will be one day - so for me in a way they're all "Unknown Soldiers." I have visited the Tomb Of The Unknowns in Washington, D.C., and found the changing of the guard there powerful, moving, and filled with devotion and purpose. So I thought I would visit Wyuka, pick a random place to stop and then get out and walk until I came across the first veteran's grave I saw.
At a low spot in roughly the cemetery's center at Section 15, I pulled the car over; with the rising sun directly in my eyes, I stepped out and looked around. On my left, a craggy tree (elm?)
stood guard at the convergence of two roads and to my right was a grave whose top had basically been swallowed up by a peony plant. Stones of all types and sizes and of all conditions - both straight-standing and wobbly - stretched in every direction. Behind me was the old "Soldier's Circle" where veterans of the Civil War are buried, many of their grave markers reading simply "Union" or "CSA." In front of me off in the distance is where my sister is and parents will be; to my right over by "O" Street was the final resting place of "Oklahoma" and "Carousel" star Gordon MacRae; beyond that over in the old Potter's Field marks the final stop for mass murderer Charles Starkweather. I was surrounded by history, both past and future.
I stepped to the right, dodging a huge puddle, a foraging sparrow, and the grave-eating peony. Almost immediately I spied a small American flag stuck in the ground near a flat, rectangular stone. Five steps - including two avoiding another mini-swamp - and I was there.
Ben Schroeder.
A WWII veteran, Ben died in 1999 and was joined on this spot by his wife Lorene several years later. Off to Lorene's left was the stone of an infant boy named Ivan Dale - I assumed their son - who lived only a week in September of 1951. All of the graves were well-kept and smartly decorated with flowers. They were not forgotten.
Other than a circular marker showing "WWII Veteran" there was no clue as to what theater of operations Ben served in. Pacific? Europe? Which branch? Maybe he served at home in some capacity. Lorene, for her part, probably "served" in America on the home front, sacrificing and doing without material things and perhaps even without her beloved Ben as she waited for him to come home. While their ending was certain and at my feet, their lives were mysteries to me: the stranger, the intruder, the interloper.
As I stood, I paid my respects silently and as best I could. How do you thank a total stranger for
sacrificing in ways that a member of a future totally-spoiled-in-comparison generation couldn't possibly understand? I can't even find the words to thank my own father for doing the same during his time in hell during the early 40's. How would Ben ever hear me? Feel my thoughts? Could he feel the weight of my inadequacy through my shoes? Was I worthy? Are any of us? And what's worse is that I could have in my search stumbled upon the grave of a Korean Vet, one from Vietnam, Iraq, or any other war and felt the same. They gave so that we'd not have to.
I reached down and touched Ben and Lorene's stone, my touch perhaps helping to perpetuate a
bond between the generations. I was here; we all are; America still survives. Veterans for the most part naturally deflect praise or thanks, it seems. I could hear Ben say something like this: "I was just doing my duty as I was called to do."
Finally, I had an idea.
Reaching over, I leaned down and tapped little Ivan's stone. "I'm just a stranger to your Daddy, Ivan. But you can talk to him in ways I can't. Tell him I'm - we're all - grateful, OK?"
The marker felt rough and pebbly and slightly electric. He only lived a week, but his soul had and still does have worth. I knew the message would get through and that Ivan and his innocence "got" what I was trying to say.
The little ones always do.
