Cardinal Transportation Gets State-Sponsored Upgrades
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The Cardinal Local Schools District recently secured a school bus purchase grant from the State of Ohio for $45,000 that paid for almost half of the much-needed upgrade to the transportation department.
Memorial Day Roots Honored in Geauga By Rose Nemunaitis editor@karolovecmedia.com Flags wave proudly and red flowers honor those who died in service of the nation as Memorial Day approaches. Early observances on Decoration Day are rooted in the rich history of Geauga County, where generations of ancestors served and gave all. Three years after the Civil War ended, the Grand Army of the Republic established Memorial Day as a time for the nation to decorate veterans’ graves with flowers, according to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. “GAR quickly became the preeminent veterans’ organization formed at the close of the Civil War with membership reaching its peak in 1890, with over 400,000 members,” local historian Bari Oyler Stith said. “By then, the GAR had well over 7,000 posts, ranging in size from fewer than two dozen members in small towns, to more than a thousand in some cities.” In 1971, Memorial Day was declared a national holiday and officially observed on the last Monday in May. It is well believed the date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom across the country. “Almost every prominent veteran was enrolled in GAR, including five presidents — Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison and McKinley,” Stith said.
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Local historian Bari Oyler Stith, left, and Mary Ann Dottore, Hambden Township Cemetery sexton administrator, look at tombstones in the cemetery to add to its historical records.
Park Ranger Alan Gephardt, at James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, shared Garfield’s connections to Geauga County. The county was part of the former president’s congressional district for 17 years while Garfield was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives — from Dec. 5, 1863 to Dec. 1, 1880. Being a politician, Garfield was called on to speak to various groups in many places, including citizens of Geauga County. “In the fall of 1877, for example, he spoke at a meeting held at ‘the Opera House,’ in Chardon, where his speech ‘was well-received,’” Gephardt said. “The most significant connection Garfield had to Geau-
ga was the school he attended at Chester, the present-day Chesterland, from 1849 to 1851, called the Geauga Seminary, a Baptist school that offered James Garfield his first taste of formal education.” Congressman Garfield was the honored guest at the first Decoration Day — now Memorial Day ceremonies — at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868, and gave the first annual Decoration Day address. He “set the standard for explaining what Memorial Day is about, and why it should be commemorated, with his address titled, “Strewing Flowers on the Graves of Union Soldiers,” he said, sharing the following passage:
“If ever silence is golden, it must be here beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung… I love to believe that no heroic sacrifice is ever lost; that the characters of men are molded and inspired by what their fathers have done…” “The citizens of Geauga County, like the citizens from all over James Garfield’s congressional district, must have been proud of their representative,” Gephardt added. “Here was a man able to express his thoughts and feelings, his reverence for his country and countrymen — his fellow soldiers — so tenderly, so touchingly and with such devotion.”
Early Memorial Day Observance
Stith often wonders if participants in Memorial Day observances realize how timeless this method of observance is. “I am struck and moved by the similarity of how we honor all veterans during today’s Memorial Day celebrations,” Stith said. In Hambden Township, around 1868 services were held at the Methodist Church, now Freedom Alliance Church, and included addresses, choral selections, reading of the roll of honor and a procession to the See Memorial Day • Page 7
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