GeekForce

I got off work today after finishing up stuff down in Marion, IL, and by virtue of where I was coming from and where I needed to go (home to pay a couple more bills, deposit my paycheck, etc) I crossed the I-255 bridge (JB Bridge and her unique pink steel suspension; very cool) and landed back into MO. 

I hung a right into Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.  The history and genre of this hallowed ground, the second-largest national cemetery in the country (only the Civil War’s action in Virginia and Eastern Theater allowed Arlington to pass ours up). 

My friend’s dad died when we were kids, his mom (who helped raise me) in 2002.  The administration office has an embarassingly incomplete  database to tell family and friends where resting places are on the massive grounds. There are five-ten funerals daily, three times that number on weekends, so the markers constantly transform our memories of where we laid down caskets and released grips on their handles–the rows of graves grow wider, longer, and deeper. 

To find one, you’re given essentially a general area…when the database functions correctly.  Both ladies in the admin office are long-timer Federal employees, though neither is much older than I am.  They hunt when you ask them to. 

Maddenly, they never know who Chief Black Hawk is, let alone where he lies.  I have told them a couple of times, but without a standard White American last name and first name, I guess he doesn’t deserve to be on record.  He was incarcerated like an animal at the JB Post in the early 19th century before finally, after a couple of years of solitary and sweltering confinement (save for about fifteen minutes a day, when he could emerge, chains always on his legs, to stretch).  I know where he is buried, and I put flowers on him, the ones I get out west along the Interstate.   He deserves much more than anything that a florist shop can prepare.  He also deserves for me to write yet ANOTHER letter to BIA so they can e-mail VA, who then can route an email from Washington to St. Louis, who can send a ‘revision update’ to the Jefferson Barracks ladies, who’ll dutifully put him in.  As far as the other five-hundred-or-so Indians buried here in (mostly unmarked) graves, I don’t know.  Anybody who knew anything about any of them has been dead for over one hundred and seventy-five years (pre-Mexican War).

 Anyway, my friend’s mom wasn’t on record.  I combed the plot section (Section ‘RR’) from the back of the markers–like at Arlington, the ladies are buried with their veteran husbands, his inscription on front (nearly always with a death date prior to hers) and her information is on back.  To find Jane, then, was a sure shot of finding Les. 

I can’t believe I couldn’t find him.  A young Marine honor guard was in the area, practicing their smo0th riflemanship (with a lady Air Force Colonel!?!!?? drilling them.  They were angelic in helping me; they offered as I’d never ask.  They couldn’t find her (or him) either. 

 I called my friend, and he confirmed that the marker number/area I got from the admin lady (who WAS trying to help) was incorrect, and Jon’s coming over (he lives in IL now and will show me where to bring flowers to. 

As far as the cemetery, and I realize that Arlington had to deal with the same problem, I don’t know what they’re going to do.  Land requirements to expand (this landlocked) JB would require staggering sums of money, with millions more to purchase and level homes, not to mention the river’s high bank of heavy timber.  The stark reality, though, is that they are almost out of room.  I am baffled how the VA is going to confront this issue.  I’m telling the truth; there’s almost no room left, and easily fifty thousand veterans (low estimate) from the Korean Conflict that richly deserve resting places in this hallowed ground.