THE PLACE AND THE FACE ON THE MONUMENT
Stephanie Shute Kelsch
Delivered at Second Parish Church, May 30, 2010
By my count, this is the third Memorial Day sermon I’ve given at Second Parish. Looking back at each of those sermons, I see that I always remind you that the holiday, originally called Decoration Day, was observed in various ways by various towns – North and South – that sought to honor the Civil War dead. I’ve always reminded you that General Joshua Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic (an organization of Civil War veterans) officially declared there be a Memorial Day in 1868 and, in one form or another, the holiday has been part of our national landscape ever since. That’s almost 150 years. And I’ve always noted that one of the most recent modifications in the holiday occurred ten years ago when the Monday of this three-day weekend was named a National Day of Remembrance and citizens were asked to pause at 3:00 P.M. in silence or in listening to Taps as they remembered those individuals killed in all of our wars.
I bring up what I’ve told you in the past about the Civil War roots of our Memorial Day because it has special relevance this year as Hingham celebrates its 375th anniversary, focusing presently on the Victorian period and thus, in part, the Civil War.
Now, I don’t know about you, but as a Hingham native born and bred I can tell you that I usually associate Hingham with the American Revolution more than the Civil War. Maybe it’s because parts of that war were fought near here. Maybe it’s because Revolutionary War general Benjamin Lincoln – honored with Abraham Lincoln in Hingham every February – actually lived here. Abraham didn’t. Maybe it’s because of my own family connections to the American Revolution. Somehow, when I think of historical sightseeing for the Civil War I just don’t think of Hingham.
It’s not that important things didn’t happen in Hingham during the Civil War. Frederick Douglass came to speak to abolitionists for one thing. Governor John Andrew, Massachusetts’ war governor and impetus behind the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment featured in the movie Glory, called Hingham home. And it’s not that I’m disinterested in the Civil War. Steve and I have studied it in great detail, making many road trips to investigate battles, teaching classes to teachers, and buying countless books so as to know both the traditional history and the most recent research.
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where one of the bloodiest battles of the war took place is one of the sights to which we find we keep returning. Any of you who have been there are mindful of the many, many statues lined up at various key battle sights; statues that compel you to stop and think about the days of that horrible battle, the cost, the meaning.
Who can’t look at the tall statue of General Meade facing an equally imposing statue of General Lee across the killing field of Pickett’s Charge and not feel the terrible power of the battle? Who can’t stand at the regimental monument for the Twentieth Maine, at Little Round Top, perhaps reading aloud (as I did to my ever-patient family) from The Killer Angels – a novelized account of that part of the battle - and not tremble at the courage and the carnage? On one visit to Gettysburg with my parents, we took them on a drive through the battlefield at night – a misty night – and as we rounded one corner and a statue of a soldier resting seemed to jump into the beam of light thrown by the headlights, we felt that we had, indeed, seen a ghost.
So you can see, I’m pretty tuned in to the Civil War. In fact, when Steve and I set out on our “blue highway” road trips, we’re always looking for a town’s Civil War statue - usually located in the center of the town, often on the common. And we’ve been known to pull over so one of us can hop out of the car and double check that indeed this IS a Civil War monument. But really they’re easy to spot. In so many towns in New England – Camden, Maine; Sandwich, Mass; Derry, New Hampshire - there stands the statue, often of a single soldier, standing sentry duty for his fallen comrades.
So it stopped me when I realized I had no recollection of Hingham having a Civil War monument. Now, I’ve paid attention to the town’s history. I’ve gone to Hingham Historical Society events and done cemetery walks. And I couldn’t picture where OUR Civil War monument was.
Well, of course we do have a Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, as most Civil War monuments are called. It sits atop a small hill in Hingham Cemetery just behind the Old Ship Church. It’s a 30-foot high obelisk rising out of the same hill as a statue of war Governor Andrew who stands at his gravesite, gazing off at Hingham Harbor.
I was, of course, relieved to find Hingham’s Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, but curious about its location and design. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s a graceful monument in a beautiful setting. But, frankly, it seemed to lack the accessibility and personality and, well, the prominence I’d expected and had found in other Civil War monuments in other towns.
Eager to know more, I consulted Hingham in the Civil War – an account of the role Hingham played in the war and the memorializing that followed. The book, published by the town in 1876, told me that the town voted $5, 000 for the monument and appointed a committee to design, contract for, locate, and dedicate the monument. It told me that the citizens of Hingham were asked to donate money - so that “all may contribute to so noble a Cause” – adults donating $1.00; children 10 cents – and ultimately an additional $881.40 was raised. The report from the Monument Committee told me that the members wrestled with the choice of two sites for the monument: one the Common at Hingham Centre and the other the Hingham Cemetery. You know already that I was mistakenly thinking the monument would be on the Common, but apparently neighbors to the Common objected to having the statue located there. I don’t know if that was a Victorian version of NIMBY-ism, or reflected true pain at being reminded daily of the terrible loss of war. A loss even our small town felt. Some sports fans apparently also complained that a statue would interfere with games on the Common, although the present president of the Hingham Historical Society tells me that seems unlikely as most games were played over by our present town library. Ultimately the committee chose the Hingham Cemetery for, as John Cushing – acting chair of the Monument Committee remarked at the dedication – “the first settlers were buried here, two distinguished patriots were buried here (Benjamin Lincoln and Governor Andrew) and 16 soldiers who died in the Civil War were buried here.” He also noted that twelve other soldiers were buried in other cemeteries in Hingham; the rest in unmarked graves in battlefields in the South. The monument, of Quincy granite, was a simple obelisk - a potent symbol. As mentioned in the Time for All Ages, the obelisk dates back to early Egyptian times as a monument signifying protection involving the power of the sun. Obelisks can be found all around the world. For residents of Hingham, the symbol had additional historical weight given that an obelisk had been raised in Boston in 1843 to commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill. Hingham’s Soldiers’ and Sailor’s Monument was dedicated in on June 17, 1870 - the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Even though the obelisk was such a meaningful symbol, for some reason I again – mistakenly – had been looking for the kind of statue of a soldier that I’d seen in other towns. But in 1870, the committee found the losses all too real and decided there was no need for an actual face on the monument. The seventy-five names of Hingham’s war dead on that monument, reveal how many, many families were touched by loss. In their history of Hingham entitled Hingham Not All is Changed, Lorena and Francis Hart tell us that 97 other Hingham men died of war-related causes after the war. Although not all of the men who served FOR Hingham were necessarily FROM Hingham, five hundred men served for the town. So many families in Hingham were able to see the faces of their own sons, grandsons, brothers, fathers, nephews on the monument. And for John Cushing, acting chair of the Monument Committee, the war was all too close. One of the names of Hingham’s war dead that appears on the monument is that of Jacob Cushing – John and Harriet’s only son.
So we can see why, with such strong and immediate feeling, a simple, classical, shaft would be a suitable choice for the monument committee to make. And we can see, in a time when pedestrian traffic was far more prevalent than carriages or automobiles, when trees had not grown to a height that blocked a distant view of the monument from downtown, that Hingham residents would choose what the committee described as “this quiet retreat, away from the noise of the street, with the bay so finely in view, truly this place is one of rare beauty and fitness” It is a beautiful spot, a perfect place for remembering and mourning. But today – precisely because it is a quiet retreat, the place of the monument seems rather removed and forgotten. The faces of those soldiers lost, faded. It’s not that the sacrifices made are any less important. It’s that they are not as remembered.
That makes me ask, how do we keep the meaning of memorials alive? Is it better to memorialize lost soldiers in a secluded peaceful spot for solitude and reflection? Or is it better to memorialize them on a busy street so that they become part of the fabric of ongoing life? When we choose how to memorialize those who have given their last full measure of devotion, how far into the future will our message be heard? And if we value messages in memorials from the past, how can we make sure their messages and wisdom are not lost? In short, how do we approach the place and the face of a monument in order to keep its message of honor, courage, sacrifice - and its profound warning of the cost of war - alive?
Now I don’t want to confuse mourning with memorializing. Overlap as they may, each has a different purpose. Mourning involves coming to peace with a very personal, immediate loss, reconstructing a private world that has been altered by a shattering reality. It is intensely personal and consistent only in being unique for each individual. Memorializing, on the other hand, involves creating meaning beyond our own immediate loss; it requires making meaning that instructs those who might not have any firsthand experience of the person who has died. Memorializing gives the lost one’s life to the future and may indeed make a searingly private loss public.
And neither do I have any intention of criticizing Hingham’s Civil War Memorial Committee. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have 75 families in town lose someone to war. Neither can I imagine the challenges of negotiating all the raw feeling thus created. But thinking about that monument in Hingham Cemetery certainly has made me more aware of our responsibilities. It is a job “for us the living.” In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln also noted that “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here but it can never forget what they did here.” Perhaps President Lincoln was intentionally modest about the impact of his short speech. In truth, his words, and their longevity, remind us of the power of “saying” - precisely so people will NOT forget what has been done.
But what do we say? And what do we do so “these dead shall not have died in vain”?
How can anyone who hopes for peace effectively insure that the place and the face of a war monument remain real and instructive? How do we keep these monuments alive?
I believe we need to connect to war memorials by visiting them on some sort of regular basis. That’s connecting to the place of the monument. In addition, we need to connect to war memorials by sharing some kind of story involving them. That’s the face.
If the place of the monument is off the beaten track, we need to get out there and take our youngsters to see it. Wasn’t that part of what we were doing last Sunday when we met to place flags on veterans’ graves in the High Street Cemetery? To see an intergenerational team of workers honoring our war dead wasn’t just a lovely Sunday service. And that word “service” deserves special emphasis. It was making what could be perceived as a solemn, remote, and perhaps even scary place a scene of respectful, productive, and, yes, even joyous combined effort. Of course it meant something different to each of us, but I believe for our children especially it connected them to something that isn’t part of their daily lives now - but something they will certainly need to have thought about as citizens of the future. In opening conversations with their own family and their church family, the experience gave our children a way to explore and connect with the meaning of memorials to our war dead. If we as a church perform this service annually, replacing flags together, we will be giving the memorial to our war dead a regular place in our children’s lives.
And not only will the children have a sense of the place of where veterans are honored, they will also have stories about the day on which we placed flags. It is the connections created by storytellers, I believe, that will create the necessary face. Stories are a constant for human beings no matter how much anything else is altered. From Homer’s ancient epic The Odyssey to the latest video game, people want to know what happened. Stories make connections to war memorials, giving them a place in our lives and a face in our hearts, so they will continue to instruct us. Let me mention just one story from last week. Young Jack Barclay replaced the worn flags at my family’s gravestone. When I thanked him for giving my father and my uncle new flags, he looked at me with sudden concern. Then he saw I was smiling, that I wasn’t referring to a new loss but to one that I carry as part of who I am. He understood that I appreciated his attention to members of my family who had served and sacrificed for our country. And he beamed with pride. Someday when Jack is older, I hope I will get to tell him about my uncle, killed in the Battle of the Bulge. I hope I will get to tell him about my father, navigating Army Air Force planes in the Pacific, surviving the war but forever changed by it. Telling Jack will be another way to remember and pass on respect for that piece of history.
Tomorrow is the National Day of Remembrance of our Memorial Day Weekend. I don’t really expect that the entire country will pause at 3:00 for a moment of silence or the playing of Taps. But I would like to think that, if you observe that moment sometime in the day or if you attend the Hingham Memorial Day ceremonies, that you will follow up by taking a youngster to a place or, by telling a story, showing the child a face of those who made the supreme sacrifice for our country. Maybe you will go to the Hingham Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument. I’m optimistic enough to leave directions to the monument here for you to pick up on your way to Cushing Hall. If you don’t visit the monument, maybe you’ll tell the story of Hingham’s own Sergeant Peter Ourish who wanted to enlist so badly that he lied about his age and enlisted at the age of 16 to fight in some of the bloodiest battles of the war, including Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg before being killed. Maybe you’ll speak of Corporal Jacob Cushing who fought in many of those same battles and was killed in 1864 carrying the American flag forward in a bayonet charge.
Or perhaps you’ll take a child through the main doors of Town Hall and look to your right, where you’ll see photographs of soldiers from Hingham lost in more recent wars. You’ll recognize names and know whom to ask for stories.
Maybe you’ll find a very different way to connect to the place and face of our war dead. In his poem about Abraham Lincoln, read earlier, Langston Hughes brings Old Abe to life. Literature, like history, can create a face for the monument, create the connection. Maybe you’ll share a poem, or a passage from a novel like The Killer Angels, or a speech by Abraham Lincoln. Maybe you’ll watch a suitable program on television, seeing or listening to a story in words, images, or music.
The important thing, though, is to make the connection. Once we visit the place of remembrance and put a face on those who have sacrificed their lives in war, we will help our children – and ourselves – understand that war is not a musty history book or a distant news clip or a slick video game. We won’t be glorifying war; we will be honoring those who fought, those who died. And we will be realizing just how much war costs. It is a price we must never forget, lest we feel inclined to pay it too easily. Our Centering Thought in the order of worship quotes Longfellow declaring that, “the memory shall be ours.” So, indeed, are the responsibilities.
By remembering, may we come closer to peace.