Memorial Day in the Garden City/Radcliffe area is commemorated by services at the Garden City, Zion Lutheran Church, and Radcliffe cemeteries.  Members of the local American Legion conduct each service, and this year, Farm’s Sam Burgess, offered to serve as the trumpeter.  Sam is an accomplished music student; he holds a music scholarship at Furman, and he spent two summers with the Boston Crusaders, a drum and bugle corps.  All was well until, I discovered that I locked the keys in the car that contained Sam’s trumpet.  All of this was discovered at the very last minute, so the ceremonies at Garden City and Zion were conducted sans trumpet.  Due to the resourcefulness of community members, however, two trumpets were produced by the time of the final ceremony at Radcliffe, and Sam’s beautiful rendition of “Taps” and “The Star Spangled Banner” sang out above the Radcliffe cemetery.

So much of this trip has been a time of discovery and rediscovery.  Today, I learned that veterans of both the Confederacy and the Union are buried in the Radcliffe cemetery.  The amazing sacrifices of so many were made clear by the moving memorials at all three cemeteries.

There were three stars today–Dennis Friest, our neighbor, Denny, my brother, and my friend, Morris Stole. Herr Friest  secured trumpets by the time we arrived in Radcliffe; he also found a way to conduct the ceremonies in Radcliffe and Zion in a seamless manner; Denny, my brother, finally unlatched the lock to my car door.  There were times when it looked like it might require breaking a window, so I was thankful that a less invasive method worked.  Morris took Sam and me to the Zion and Radcliffe cemeteries.  The folks out here live in a community, and I was reminded of that fact, again.