Community Corner

Memories and Gratitude Spring Forth at Cemetery Observance

Speakers called on the living to take inspiration from the military dead.

 

Selectmen's Chairman Jill Sullivan turned to Walt Whitman and his poem to slain President Abraham Lincoln.

Rev. Dean Pedersen turned to generations of sacrifices from World War II to the present.

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Together, they gave Memorial Day observances in the Swampscott Cemetery's Veterans Lot respect and solemnity — and gratitude for a spring day.

Rolling clouds, trees new with leaves and sun left the encircled crowd in shade and light, shifting with the clouds and wind.

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The selectman read from Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.

The reverend saluted veterans' sacrifices. He asked the crowd to be inspired by the veterans and to dedicate themselves to peace and care. 

Online and from afar, former Swampscott resident John Romano demonstrated some of that care. He wrote that each Memorial Day he forces himself to read what he wrote the day he learned of the death of his friend Marine Capt. Jennifer Harris.

You can read it here: http://johnromano.livejournal.com/2007/02/08/


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