Memorial Day Weekend 2023
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. - John 15:13.
I wanted to write about my experiences Sunday visiting Arlington Memorial Cemetery and specific graves as well as visiting the World War II Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC.
I noticed last week that Sunday there was going to be a historic program on Decoration Day at the Ampitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. This was going to be held in conjunction with the opportunity for everyday citizens to lay a flower at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
I discussed this with my daughter and she had read a book recently- Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - and wanted to go. She already knew about my wife’s two great-uncles who died a few months apart in separate theaters during World War II; one of them earned a posthumous Medal of Honor for his actions in the Pacific when he was 21 and the other was killed when his B-17 was shot down returning from a mission over Germany. Their names are Anthony P. Damato and Neal J. Damato.
We headed out Sunday morning and I decided to play the song Arlington, by Trace Adkins as a preface to the trip for my daughter, and it ended up having more of an emotional impact than it has for me before, jokes about there being dust in the air and allergies aside.
As we pulled into a Royal Farms outside Baltimore to get snacks for our trip, I saw two men on motorcycles about to leave and their gear and bikes indicated they were Vietnam veterans. I had a good talk with them and found out they were from Ontario, California and had driven east to participate in Rolling to Remember, the successor to Operation Rolling Thunder.
I knew I wanted to take my daughter to visit Cherone Gunn’s grave, and had already told his brother Anton, a friend of mine, that I planned to. I also talked to some others I knew from the milblogger era, including Matt Burden, Mark Seavey, and Sean Dustman to put together a list of people whose graves needed to be visited for reasons of significance and in some cases, a lack of family in the area to visit their graves this weekend. We made it to almost everyone on the list.
I am writing this piece for one primary reason - to say their names and tell of their deeds so that they will not be forgotten.
Why It’s Important, and Why We Must Do Better
The commercialization of Memorial Day online and in social media has bothered me for a while. Sure, have your picnics, cookouts, and beach trips but remember the reason you’re able to do some in a free country. In recent years I’ve also gotten fed up with political types of all persuasions who just want to pay lip service to the day but but five minutes before and five minutes afterward they are waging unhinged political warfare about whatever the alleged conservative or liberal outrage of the day is.
One quick rant: the words “Happy Memorial Day” should never be uttered by anyone. The late Carrie Costantini, a Marine wife I knew, was someone who helped reinforce the thoughts I already had on this matter. Anton Gunn mentioned in his weekly observations on social media yesterday, and I really think anyone who says it or otherwise needs help remembering the real reason should be admonished to go down to Section 60 at Arlington on Memorial Day weekend and see what happens when they say Happy Memorial Day to the widows and other family members, who still go to their family member’s grave and camp out there all day on days like yesterday and today.
To end this rant, I just want to thank a friend for inspiring this part of my piece. I really think a large part of the disconnect is because of the growing disconnect in society due to how few people serve or have family and friends who serve anymore. That’s not a reason to let Memorial Day totally become a reason to go to the beach or to have a cookout. That’s the reason for the rest of this piece, to highlight names, deeds, and sacrifices that must be remembered. If this makes you upset and want to stop reading now, then my point is proven. However, you really need to keep reading about the men whose graves we visited.
Tomb of the Unknowns
We got to Arlington toward the middle of the day Sunday; we rode the tram to the Tomb of the Unknowns, got there in time for the 1 p.m. Changing of the Guard, after waiting for the Captain of the Guard to bring the relief guard across the sidewalk in front of us. After that, we got queued up in the line for flowers and placed our flowers at the Tomb.
We stopped at Arlington House next and saw the tomb with unknown Union soldiers buried in what had been Mary Custis Lee’s rose garden. In 1864, Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army Montgomery Meigs “personally oversaw the burial of 65 Union officers, including his own son, John Rodgers Meigs, in Mary Lee’s rose garden and ordered all burials after that to be done as close to the mansion as possible so that it could not be used as a residence again.”
Following some time observing the great view of downtown DC from the front lawn of the house (which show why the Union Army had to seize it at the beginning of the Civil War lest it be used as the site of a siege battery), we went back to the visitor’s center via tram and started the next part of our trip. The trams generally stick to the popular and historic areas of the cemetery and don’t go to the more recent gravesites. I understand the reasoning and the need for that and I think it would likely be a disservice to the families if the trams were running through Section 60 and other nearby areas. However, whether you know anyone buried there or not, you need to learn about some of the people buried there, and take your children or family there to learn of the sacrifices of these men and women as well as the ones in the areas served by the tour.
I had prepared for grave visits by looking up names in the ANC Explorer app, via the phone and the web and then making a note in Evernote with them sorted by section.
Section 60 and other graves
We were able to get gravesite shuttle service to drop us off at Section 60 and visited all of these graves on foot. As we rode out to the graves, another passenger was a veteran with a service dog, and his servous dog was getting agitated. He told the driver the dog didn’t like gunfire and that even though there were no funerals yesterday because it was Sunday, the dog didn’t know that. As we got dropped off at Section 60, the driver noted that Colin Powell is buried in the first row of where we were.
Unlike most of the graves we visited, Powell did not die in combat or as a result combat injuries. While he is most known for his time as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later as Secretary of State, he is buried in a grave in Section 60 with a government-issued marker. Powell had his first tour in Vietnam shortened after stepping on a punji stake in a Viet Cong-held area. When he went back to Vietnam, he received the Soldier’s Medal for bravery after he survived a helicopter crash and rescued three others from the burning wreckage.
The flowers being given out for placing on graves at the visitor’s center and at the ampitheater were gone by the time we got there and we never found any of the ones they said were in other sections of the cemetery. Luckily we ran into a gentleman from a group whose exact name I can’t remember who had extra flowers for graves and gave some to us.
Mark C. Lawrence
SSG Mark Lawrence was 31 years old when he died in 2012. He served in the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sean Dustman suggested we visit his grave.
The next two graves we visited were Travis Manion and Brendan Looney.
Travis Manion
Travis Manion was a U.S. Marine who was a 2004 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. He was assigned to First Reconnaissance Battalion, First Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton when he was killed in the Anbar province in Iraq on April 29, 2007. As a First Lieutenant, Manion was killed by an enemy sniper while leading a counterattack against Iraqi insurgents and aiding and drawing fire away from his Marine comrades. Every man in his patrol survived due to his actions. He was originally buried in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania but his remains were removed to be buried at Arlington next to his good friend Brendan Looney.
I was already familiar with Travis Manion because of the Travis Manion Foundation, which was started by his family following his death. I participated in the TMF Memorial Day 5K a few years ago by rucking it after learning about it via GoRuck. I raised enough money that I received a TMF cap which I wore yesterday. I also have known Mary Katharine Ham, a member of the Travis Manion Foundation Board of Directors, for many years.
Brendan Looney
Navy Lieutenant Brendan Looney was a Maryland native and a graduate of DeMatha High School and the U.S. Naval Academy in the same class as Travis Manion. He was originally recruited to play football and ended up playing lacrosse at USNA. After serving as an intelligence officer, he was reassigned to Special Warfare and became a Navy SEAL officer. Looney and nine other men died when the UH-60 Black Hawk they were on board crashed near Ayatalah Village, Afghanistan, during combat operations.
Ross McGinnis
The next grave we visited was Specialist Ross McGinnis - a suggestion made by Matt Burden. McGinnis was a Pennsylvania native and enlisted in the Army on his 17th birthday in 2004 via the delayed entry program. He completed his initial entry training as an infantryman at Fort Benning and was assigned to the First Infantry Division in Germany. His unit deployed to Eastern Baghdad in August 2006. McGinnis was serving as a M2 .50 caliber machine gunner in 1st Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment. On December 4, 2006, 1st Platoon was conducting a mounted patrol in Adhamiyah when an insurgent on a rooftop threw a fragmentation grade into the humvee McGinnis was riding in. McGinnis yelled “grenade!” and threw his back over the grenade and pinned it between his body and a radio mount; saving the other four members of his crew. He died a little over a month from turning 20. McGinnis was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. As I read his citation for the MOH today, I started crying because it reminded me of what my wife’s uncle Anthony Damato did in a foxhole in the Solomon Islands.
Cherone Gunn
The next grave we visited was Cherone Gunn. I am friends with his brother Anton Gunn, thanks to us both being involved in politics in South Carolina in the past and additionally because of a high school classmate of mine named Eric Sullivan who played college football with Anton at the University of South Carolina.
Cherone Gunn followed in his father’s foosteps by enlisting in the Navy on January 20, 2000 when he was 21. He turned 22 in February while at training. On May 23, 2000 he completed training and was assigned to the USS Cole. On October 12, 2000, he was one of seventeen sailors killed when a terrorist bomb was set off beside the ship.
I found this quote from Anton after Cherone’s funeral that was reported on by The Washington Post:
Remember, they died for the country. They died defending a country we love. They died for us. That’s what’s important.”
Jason Cunningham
Jason Cunningham was another suggestion by Matt Burden. Matt told me that he had “turned future USAF fighter pilots into SAR pilots with a speech about Jason.”
Cunningham was born in Dallas, Texas and grew up in Gallup, New Mexico. He enlisted in the Navy in 1994 and left it in 1998 before enlisting in the Air Force in 1999. He became a pararescueman in 2001 and was assigned to the 38th Rescue Squadron.
Airman Cunningham was the primary Air Force Combat Search and Rescue medic assigned to a Quick Reaction Force tasked to recover two American servicemen evading capture in austere terrain occupied by massed Al Qaida and Taliban forces.
Shortly before landing, his MH-47E helicopter received accurate rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire, severely disabling the aircraft and causing it to crash land. The assault force formed a hasty defense and immediately suffered three fatalities and five critical casualties.
Despite effective enemy fire, and at great risk to his own life, Airman Cunningham remained in the burning fuselage of the aircraft in order to treat the wounded. As he moved his patients to a more secure location, mortar rounds began to impact within fifty feet of his position. Disregarding this extreme danger, he continued the movement and exposed himself to enemy fire on seven separate occasions. When the second casualty collection point was also compromised, in a display of uncommon valor and gallantry, Airman Cunningham braved an intense small arms and rocket-propelled grenade attack while repositioning the critically wounded to a third collection point.Even after he was mortally wounded and quickly deteriorating, he continued to direct patient movement and transferred care to another medic. In the end, his distinct efforts led to the successful delivery of ten gravely wounded Americans to life-saving medical treatment.
His actions to save others made himself vulnerable, however, and he was mortally wounded while carrying an injured helicopter crewman.
These events related to the Battle of Takur Ghar, aka Roberts Ridge.
Jonn Lilyea
I knew Jonn through a group of milbloggers back in the day and he was also friends with Matt Burden and Mark Seavey, who helped me choose this list. Seavey named a son for him. Through his writings on Stolen Valor on his blog This Ain’t Hell he helped expose countless valor thieves. Jonn served as an infantryman in Desert Storm. While he may not have died in combat, he died from injuries he suffered during that war and I know he had a lot of health challenges as a result of them.
John French Ryder
John French Ryder was not on my list of graves to visit, but his marker caught my eye. Ryder was a Portland, Oregon native and a 1936 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. He was on board the submarine USS Perch which was hit with Japanese depth charges and scuttled in the Java Sea. He was recovered by Japanese forces and interrogated for five months and placed in a prisoner of war camp for the remaining three years of the war. He later taught mine warfare at the Naval War College and served as a staff officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Carroll Hines
Carroll Hines was also not on my list but I got a picture of his grave because I was curious. Based on what I’ve found online, it appears he was a Bataan Death March survivor.
Raider Earle Ramstad
Raider Earle Ramstad was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1919. He was an Eagle Scout. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 and became an aircraft commander of a B-24 Liberator in Europe. On his 25th mission, he was shot down and became a prisoner of war. He was recalled to service during the Korean War. Upon his retirement, he was a command pilot with over 7000 hours of flight time in various types of aircraft.
The World War II & Vietnam Veterans Memorials
After we left Arlington, we headed into Washington to go to the National Mall. We stopped at the World War II Memorial and I gave my daughter a challenge to find “Kilroy” while we were there. Then after that we headed to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
In the late 1990s or early 2000s, I purchased a MIA bracelet for SP5 Frankie Johnson of South Carolina at a surplus store near Fort Jackson when I lived in Columbia, South Carolina. I chose his name because he was enlisted and it said he was from South Carolina on the bracelet. I later found out that he was from Laurens County (my home county) in the Fountain Inn. Area. I hadn’t had the chance to find him on the wall at the Vietnam memorial until last night.
On April 21, 1968, Frankie B. Johnson Jr. was crew chief on a UH-1 Iroquois (aka Huey) that was lost following completion of its primary mission and cancellation of its secondary mission due to weather problems.
Thanks for reading this important post on these men who sacrificed their lives for our country and our freedom.
Outstanding writing! The best article on Memorial Day that I have read in years.